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Life and career
19491972: Early years
Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and spent his childhood and high school years in Freehold Borough. He lived off South Street in Freehold Borough and attended Freehold Borough High School. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was of Dutch and Irish ancestry and worked, among other vocations, as a bus driver; his surname is Dutch for stepping stone. His mother, Adele Ann (ne Zerilli), was a legal secretary and was of Italian ancestry. His grandfather was born in Vico Equense, a city near Naples. He has two younger sisters, Virginia and Pamela. Pamela had a brief film career, but left acting to pursue still photography full time; she took photos for the Human Touch and Lucky Town albums.
Raised a Roman Catholic, Springsteen attended the St. Rose of Lima Catholic school in Freehold Borough, where he was at odds with both the nuns and other students, even though much of his later music reflects a deep Catholic ethos and included many rock-influenced, traditional Irish-Catholic hymns.
In ninth grade, he transferred to the public Freehold Regional High School, but did not fit in there, either. Old teachers have said he was a loner, who wanted nothing more than to play his guitar. He completed high school, but felt so uncomfortable that he skipped his own graduation ceremony. He briefly attended Ocean County College, but dropped out.
Springsteen had been inspired to take up music at the age of seven after seeing Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show. At 13, he bought his first guitar for $18; later, his mother took out a loan to buy the 16-year-old Springsteen a $60 Kent guitar, as he later memorialized in his song The Wish.
In 1965, he went to the house of Tex and Marion Vinyard, who sponsored young bands in town. They helped him become lead guitarist and subsequently the lead singer of The Castiles. The Castiles recorded two original songs at a public recording studio in Brick Township and played a variety of venues, including Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village. Marion Vinyard said that she believed the young Springsteen when he promised he would make it big.
Called for induction when he was 19, Springsteen failed his physical examination and didnt serve in Vietnam. In an interview in Rolling Stone magazine in 1984, he said, When I got on the bus to go take my physical, I thought one thing: I aint goin. He suffered a concussion in a motorcycle accident when he was 17, and this together with his crazy behaviour at induction and not taking the tests, was enough to get him a 4F.
New Jersey beach towns such as Asbury Park, New Jersey inspired the themes of ordinary life in Bruce Springsteens music.
In the late 1960s, Springsteen performed briefly in a power trio known as Earth, playing in clubs in New Jersey. Springsteen acquired the nickname The Boss during this period as when he played club gigs with a band he took on the task of collecting the bands nightly pay and distributing it amongst his bandmates. Springsteen, however, has never liked this nickname, due to his dislike of bosses. Lately, however, he seems to have accepted the nickname. Many recent concerts have audiences making up various signs on banners, license plates and so on saying, Boss Time. Previously he had the nickname Doctor. From 1969 through early 1971, Springsteen performed with Steel Mill, which also featured Danny Federici, Vini Lopez, Vinnie Roslin and later Steve Van Zandt and Robbin Thompson. They went on to play the mid-Atlantic college circuit, and also briefly in California. In January 1970 well-known San Francisco Examiner music critic Philip Elwood gave Springsteen credibility in his glowing assessment of Steel Mill: I have never been so overwhelmed by totally unknown talent. Elwood went on to praise their cohesive musicality and, in particular, singled out Springsteen as a most impressive composer. During this time Springsteen also performed regularly at small clubs in Asbury Park and along the Jersey Shore, quickly gathering a cult following. Other acts followed over the next two years, as Springsteen sought to shape a unique and genuine musical and lyrical style: Dr Zoom & the Sonic Boom (earlyid 1971), Sundance Blues Band (mid 1971), and The Bruce Springsteen Band (mid 1971id 1972). With the addition of pianist David Sancious, the core of what would later become the E Street Band was formed, with occasional temporary additions such as horn sections, The Zoomettes (a group of female backing vocalists for Dr Zoom) and Southside Johnny Lyon on harmonica. Musical genres explored included blues, R&B, jazz, church music, early rockn'roll, and soul. His prolific songwriting ability, with more words in some individual songs than other artists had in whole albums, brought his skill to the attention of several people who were about to change his life: new managers Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos, and legendary Columbia Records talent scout John Hammond, who, under Appels pressure, auditioned Springsteen in May 1972.
Even after Springsteen gained international acclaim, his New Jersey roots showed through in his music, and he often praised the great state of New Jersey in his live shows. Drawing on his extensive local appeal, he routinely sold out consecutive nights in major New Jersey and Philadelphia venues. He also made many surprise appearances at The Stone Pony and other shore nightclubs over the years, becoming the foremost exponent of the Jersey Shore sound.
19721974: Initial struggle for success
Springsteen signed a record deal with Columbia Records in 1972, with the help of John Hammond, who had signed Bob Dylan to the same label a decade earlier. Springsteen brought many of his New Jerseyased colleagues into the studio with him, thus forming the E Street Band (although it would not be formally named as such for a couple more years). His debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., released in January 1973, established him as a critical favorite, though sales were slow. Because of Springsteens lyrical poeticism and folk rockooted music exemplified on tracks like Blinded by the Light and For You, as well as the Columbia and Hammond connections, critics initially compared Springsteen to Bob Dylan. He sings with a freshness and urgency I havent heard since I was rocked by Like a Rolling Stone, wrote Crawdaddy magazine editor Peter Knobler in Springsteens first interview/profile, in March 1973. Crawdaddy discovered Springsteen in the rock press and was his earliest champion. (Springsteen and the E Street Band acknowledged by giving a private performance at the Crawdaddy 10th Anniversary Party in New York City in June 1976.) Music critic Lester Bangs wrote in Creem, 1975, that when Springsteens first album was released..many of us dismissed it: he wrote like Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, sang like Van Morrison and Robbie Robertson, and led a band that sounded like Van Morrisons. The track Spirit in the Night especially showed Morrisons influence, while Lost in the Flood was the first of many portraits of Vietnam veterans and Growin Up his first take on the recurring theme of adolescence.
In September 1973 his second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, was released, again to critical acclaim but no commercial success. Springsteens songs became grander in form and scope, with the E Street Band providing a less folky, more R&B vibe and the lyrics often romanticizing teenage street life. 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) and Incident on 57th Street would become fan favorites, and the long, rousing Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) continues to rank among Springsteens most beloved concert numbers.
In the May 22, 1974, issue of Bostons The Real Paper, music critic Jon Landau wrote after seeing a performance at the Harvard Square Theater, I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time. Landau subsequently became Springsteens manager and producer, helping to finish the epic new album, Born to Run. Given an enormous budget in a last-ditch effort at a commercially viable record, Springsteen became bogged down in the recording process while striving for a wall of sound production. But, fed by the release of an early mix of Born to Run to progressive rock radio, anticipation built toward the albums release. All in all the album took more than 14 months to record, with six months alone spent on the song Born To Run. During this time Springsteen battled with anger and frustration over the album, saying he heard sounds in [his] head that he could not explain to the others in the studio. It was during these recording sessions that Miami Steve Van Zandt would stumble into the studio just in time to help Springsteen organize the horn section on Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out (it is his only written contribution to the album), and eventually led to his joining the E Street Band.[citation needed] Van Zandt had been a long-time friend of Springsteen, as well as a collaborator on earlier musical projects, and understood where he was coming from, which helped him to translate some of the sounds Springsteen was hearing. Still, by the end of the grueling recording sessions, Springsteen was not satisfied, and, upon first hearing the finished album, threw the record into the alley and told Jon Landau he would rather just cut the album live at The Bottom Line, a place he often played.[citation needed]
The woman in his life during this time was part-time-live-in 20-year-old Karen Darvin of Dallas, Texas, who was in New York City pursuing a career in dance.
19751983: Breakthrough
On August 13, 1975, Springsteen and the E Street Band began a five-night, 10-show stand at New Yorks Bottom Line club. The engagement attracted major media attention, was broadcast live on WNEW-FM, and convinced many skeptics that Springsteen was for real. (Decades later, Rolling Stone Magazine would name the stand as one of the 50 Moments That Changed Rock and Roll.) With the release of Born to Run on August 25, 1975, Springsteen finally found success. The album peaked at number 3 on the Billboard 200, and while there were no hit singles, Born to Run (Billboard #23), Thunder Road, Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out (Billboard #83), and Jungleland all received massive album-oriented rock airplay and remain perennial favorites on many classic rock stations. The songwriting and recording was more disciplined than before, while still maintaining an epic feel. With its panoramic imagery, thundering production and desperate optimism, Born to Run is considered by some fans to be among the best rock and roll albums of all time and Springsteens finest work. It established him as a sincere and dynamic rock and roll personality who spoke for and in the voice of a large part of the rock audience. To cap off the triumph, Springsteen appeared on the covers of both Time and Newsweek in the same week, on October 27 of that year. So great did the wave of publicity become that Springsteen eventually rebelled against it during his first venture overseas, tearing down promotional posters before a concert appearance in London.
A legal battle with former manager Mike Appel kept Springsteen out of the studio for over two years, during which time he kept the E Street Band together through extensive touring across the U.S. Despite the optimistic fervor with which he often performed, the new songs he was writing and often debuting on stage had taken a more somber tone than much of his previous work. Reaching settlement with Appel in 1977, Springsteen finally returned to the studio, and the subsequent sessions produced Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978). Musically, this album was a turning point in Springsteens career. Gone were the raw, rapid-fire lyrics, outsized characters and long, multi-part musical compositions of the first two albums; now the songs were leaner and more carefully drawn and began to reflect Springsteens growing intellectual and political awareness. Some fans consider Darkness Springsteens best and most consistent record; tracks such as Badlands and The Promised Land became concert staples for decades to come, while the track Prove It All Night received a significant amount of album rock radio airplay. Other fans would prefer the work of the adventurous early Springsteen. The cross-country 1978 tour to promote the album would become legendary for the intensity and length of its shows.
By the late 1970s, Springsteen had earned a reputation in the pop world as a songwriter whose material could provide hits for other bands. Manfred Manns Earth Band had achieved a U.S. number one pop hit with a heavily rearranged version of For You and Greetings Blinded by the Light in early 1977. Patti Smith reached number 13 with her take on Springsteens unreleased Because the Night (which Smith co-wrote) in 1978, while The Pointer Sisters hit number two in 1979 with Springsteens also unreleased Fire.
Springsteen in concert on The River Tour. Drammenshallen, Drammen, Norway, May 5, 1981.
In September 1979, Springsteen and the E Street Band joined the Musicians United for Safe Energy anti-nuclear power collective at Madison Square Garden for two nights, playing an abbreviated set while premiering two songs from his upcoming album. The subsequent No Nukes live album, as well as the following summers No Nukes documentary film, represented the first official recordings and footage of Springsteens fabled live act, as well as Springsteens first tentative dip into political involvement.
Springsteen continued to consolidate his thematic focus on working-class life with the 20-song double album The River in 1980, which included an intentionally paradoxical range of material from good-time party rockers to emotionally intense ballads, and finally yielded his first hit Top Ten single as a performer, Hungry Heart. This album marked a shift in Springsteens music toward a pop-rock sound that was all but missing from any of his earlier work. This is apparent in the stylistic adoption of certain eighties pop-rock hallmarks like the reverberating-tenor drums, very basic percussion/guitar and repetitive lyrics apparent in many of the tracks. The title song pointed to Springsteens intellectual direction, while a couple of the lesser-known tracks presaged his musical direction. The album sold well, becoming his first topper on the Billboard Pop Albums chart, and a long tour in 1980 and 1981 followed, featuring Springsteens first extended playing of Europe and ending with a series of multi-night arena stands in major cities in the U.S.
The River was followed in 1982 by the stark solo acoustic Nebraska. According to the Marsh biographies, Springsteen was in a depressed state when he wrote this material, and the result is a brutal depiction of American life. The title track is about the murder spree of Charles Starkweather. According to Marsh, the album started as a demo tape for new work to be played with the E Street Band, but during the recording process Springsteen and producer Landau realized the songs worked better as solo acoustic numbers. Several studio sessions with the E Street Band led them to realize that the original recording, made in Springsteens home on a simple, low-tech four-track tape deck, were the best versions they were going to get. However, those sessions were not all for naught, as the band recorded several new songs that Springsteen had written in addition to the Nebraska material, including Born in the U.S.A. and Glory Days. These new songs would not be released until two years later, when they formed the basis of Springsteens next album.
While Nebraska did not sell well, it garnered widespread critical praise (including being named Album of the Year by Rolling Stone magazines critics) and influenced later significant works by other major artists, including U2s album The Joshua Tree. It helped inspire the musical genre known as lo-fi music, becoming a cult favorite among indie-rockers. Springsteen did not tour in conjunction with Nebraskas release.
19841991: Commercial and popular phenomenon
Springsteen probably is best known for his album Born in the U.S.A. (1984), which sold 15 million copies in the U.S. and became one of the best-selling albums of all time, with seven singles hitting the Top 10, and the massively successful world tour that followed it. The title track was a bitter commentary on the treatment of Vietnam veterans, some of whom were Springsteens friends and bandmates. The lyrics in the verses were entirely unambiguous when listened to, but the anthemic music and the title of the song made it hard for many, from politicians to the common person, to get the lyricsxcept those in the chorus, which could be read many ways. The song was widely misinterpreted as jingoistic, and in connection with the 1984 presidential campaign became the subject of considerable folklore. Springsteen also turned down several million dollars offered by the Chrysler Corporation to use the song in a car commercial. (In later years, to eliminate the bombast and make the songs original meaning more explicitly clear, Springsteen performed the song accompanied only by acoustic guitar. An acoustic version also appeared on Tracks, a later album.) Dancing in the Dark was the biggest of seven hit singles from Born in the U.S.A., peaking at number 2 on the Billboard music charts. The music video for the song featured a young Courteney Cox dancing on stage with Springsteen, an appearance which helped kickstart the actresss career. The song Cover Me was written by Springsteen for Donna Summer, but his record company persuaded him to keep it for the new album. A big fan of Summers work, Springsteen wrote another song for her, Protection. Videos for the album were made by noted film directors Brian De Palma and John Sayles. Springsteen was featured on the We Are the World song and album in 1985.
During the Born in the U.S.A. Tour, Springsteen met actress Julianne Phillips. They were married in Lake Oswego, Oregon, on May 13, 1985, surrounded by intense media attention. Opposites in background, their marriage was not long-lived. Springsteens 1987 album Tunnel of Love described some of his unhappinesses in the relationship, and during the subsequent Tunnel of Love Express tour, as reported by many tabloids, Springsteen took up with backup singer Patti Scialfa. Phillips and Springsteen filed for divorce in 1988. The divorce was finalized in 1989.
Springsteen performing on the Tunnel of Love Express at the Radrennbahn Weiensee in East Berlin on July 19, 1988.
The Born in the U.S.A. period represented the height of Springsteens visibility in popular culture and the broadest audience demographic he would ever reach (aided by the release of Arthur Bakers dance mixes of three of the singles). Live/197585, a five-record box set (also on three cassettes or three CDs), was released near the end of 1986 and became the first box set to debut at number 1 on the U.S. album charts. It is one of the most commercially successful live albums of all time, ultimately selling 13 million units in the U.S. Live/197585 summed up Springsteens career to that point and displayed some of the elements that made his shows so powerful to his fans: the switching from mournful dirges to party rockers and back; the communal sense of purpose between artist and audience; the long, intense spoken passages before songs, including those describing Springsteens difficult relationship with his father; and the instrumental prowess of the E Street Band, such as in the long coda to Racing in the Street. Despite its popularity, some fans and critics felt the albums song selection could have been better. Springsteen concerts are the subjects of frequent bootleg recording and trading among fans.
By the peak of Springsteens international megastardom in the mid-80s there were no less than five Springsteen fanzines circulating at the same time in the UK, and many others elsewhere. Gary Desmonds Candys Room, produced in Liverpool, was the first in 1980, quickly followed by Dan Frenchs Point Blank, Dave Percivals The Fever, Jeff Matthews Rendezvous and Paul Limbricks Jackson Cage. In the US, Backstreets Magazine started in Seattle and continues today as a glossy publication, now in communication with Springsteens management and official website.
After this commercial peak, Springsteen released the much more sedate and contemplative Tunnel of Love (1987), a mature reflection on the many faces of love found, lost and squandered, which only selectively used the E Street Band. It presaged the breakup of his marriage to Julianne Phillips. Reflecting the challenges of love in Brilliant Disguise, Springsteen sang:
I heard somebody call your name, from underneath our willow. I saw something tucked in shame, underneath your pillow. Well Ive tried so hard baby, but I just cant see. What a woman like you is doing with me.
The subsequent Tunnel of Love Express tour shook up fans with changes to the stage layout, favorites dropped from the set list, and horn-based arrangements. During the European leg in 1988, Springsteens relationship with Scialfa became public. Later in 1988, Springsteen headlined the worldwide Human Rights Now! tour for Amnesty International. In the fall of 1989 he dissolved the E Street Band, and he and Scialfa relocated to California. Springsteen married Scialfa in 1991. They have three children: Evan James (b. 1990), Jessica Rae (b. 1991) and Sam Ryan (b. 1994).
19922001: Artistic and commercial ups and downs
In 1992, after risking charges of going Hollywood by moving to Los Angeles (a radical move for someone so linked to the blue-collar life of the Jersey Shore) and working with session musicians, Springsteen released two albums at once. Human Touch and Lucky Town were even more introspective than any of his previous work and displayed a newly revealed confidence. As opposed to his first two albums, which dreamed of happiness, and his next four, which showed him growing to fear it, at points during the Lucky Town album, Springsteen actually claims happiness for himself.
Some E Street Band fans voiced (and continue to voice) a low opinion of these albums, especially Human Touch, and did not follow the subsequent Other Band Tour. Other fans, however, who had only come to know Springsteen after the 1975 consolidation of the E Street Band, found this tour an exciting opportunity to see Springsteen develop a working onstage relationship with a different group of musicians, and to see him explore the Asbury Park soul-and-gospel base in some of his classic material.
An electric band appearance on the acoustic MTV Unplugged television program (later released as In Concert/MTV Plugged) was poorly received and further cemented fan dissatisfaction. Springsteen seemed to realize this a few years hence when he spoke humorously of his late father during his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame acceptance speech:
Ive gotta thank him because what would I conceivably have written about without him? I mean, you can imagine that if everything had gone great between us, we would have had disaster. I would have written just happy songs and I tried it in the early 90s and it didnt work; the public didnt like it.
A multiple Grammy Award winner, Springsteen also won an Academy Award in 1994 for his song Streets of Philadelphia, which appeared on the soundtrack to the film Philadelphia. The song, along with the film, was applauded by many for its sympathetic portrayal of a gay man dying of AIDS.[citation needed] The music video for the song shows Springsteens actual vocal performance, recorded using a hidden microphone, to a prerecorded instrumental track.[citation needed] This technique was developed on the Brilliant Disguise video.
In 1995, after temporarily re-organizing the E Street Band for a few new songs recorded for his first Greatest Hits album (a recording session that was chronicled in the documentary Blood Brothers), he released his second (mostly) solo guitar album, The Ghost of Tom Joad, inspired by Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass, a book by Pulitzer Prize-winners author Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael Williamson. This was generally less well-received than the similar Nebraska, due to the minimal melody, twangy vocals, and political nature of most of the songs, although some praised it for giving voice to immigrants and others who rarely have one in American culture. The lengthy, worldwide, small-venue solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad Tour that followed successfully featured many of his older songs in drastically reshaped acoustic form, although Springsteen had to explicitly remind his audiences to be quiet and not to clap during the performances.
Following the tour, Springsteen moved back to New Jersey with his family. In 1998, Springsteen released the sprawling, four-disc box set of out-takes, Tracks. Subsequently, Springsteen would acknowledge that the 1990s were a lost period for him: I didnt do a lot of work. Some people would say I didnt do my best work.
Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 by U2, a favor he returned in 2005.
In 1999, Springsteen and the E Street Band officially came together again and went on the extensive Reunion Tour, lasting over a year. Highlights included a record sold-out, 15-show run at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey to kick off the American leg of the tour.
Springsteens Reunion Tour with the E Street Band ended with a triumphant ten-night, sold-out engagement at New York Citys Madison Square Garden in mid-2000 and controversy over a new song, American Skin (41 Shots), about the police shooting of Amadou Diallo. The final shows at Madison Square Garden were recorded and resulted in an HBO Concert, with corresponding DVD and album releases as Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live in New York City.
2002resent: Return to mainstream success
The scene outside the Giants Stadium parking lot for banner-marked, record-setting, 10-night stand of The Rising Tour during July 2003.
In 2002, Springsteen released his first studio effort with the full band in 18 years, The Rising, produced by Brendan OBrien. The album, mostly a reflection on the September 11 attacks, was a critical and popular success. (Many of the songs were influenced by phone conversations Springsteen had with family members of victims of the attacks who in their obituaries had mentioned how his music touched their lives.) The title track gained airplay in several radio formats, and the record became Springsteens best-selling album of new material in 15 years. Kicked off by an early-morning Asbury Park appearance on The Today Show, The Rising Tour commenced, barnstorming through a series of single-night arena stands in the U.S. and Europe to promote the album in 2002, then returning for large-scale, multiple-night stadium shows in 2003. While Springsteen had maintained a loyal hardcore fan base everywhere (and particularly in Europe), his general popularity had dipped over the years in some southern and midwestern regions of the U.S. But it was still strong in Europe and along the U.S. coasts, and he played an unprecedented 10 nights in Giants Stadium in New Jersey, a ticket-selling feat to which no other musical act has come close. During these shows Springsteen thanked those fans who were attending multiple shows and those who were coming from long distances or another country; the advent of robust Bruce-oriented online communities had made such practices more common. The Rising Tour came to a final conclusion with three nights in Shea Stadium, highlighted by renewed controversy over American Skin and a guest appearance by Bob Dylan.
During the early 2000s, Springsteen became a visible advocate for the revitalization of Asbury Park, and played an annual series of winter holiday concerts there to benefit various local businesses, organizations, and causes. These shows were explicitly intended for the devoted fans, featuring numbers such as the unreleased (until Tracks) E Street Shuffle outtake Thundercrack, a rollicking group-participation song that would mystify casual Springsteen fans. He also frequently rehearses for tours in Asbury Park; some of his most devoted followers even go so far as to stand outside the building to hear what fragments they can of the upcoming shows. The song My City of Ruins was originally written about Asbury Park, in honor of the attempts to revitalize the city. Looking for an appropriate song for a post-Sept. 11 benefit concert honoring New York City, he selected My City of Ruins, which was immediately recognized as an emotional highlight of the concert, with its gospel themes and its heartfelt exhortations to Rise up! The song became associated with post-9/11 New York, and he chose it to close The Rising album and as an encore on the subsequent tour.
At the Grammy Awards of 2003, Springsteen performed The Clashs London Calling along with Elvis Costello, Dave Grohl, and E Street Band member Steven Van Zandt and No Doubts bassist, Tony Kanal, in tribute to Joe Strummer; Springsteen and the Clash had once been considered multiple-album-dueling rivals at the time of the double The River and the triple Sandinista!. In 2004, Springsteen and the E Street Band participated in the Vote for Change tour, along with John Mellencamp, John Fogerty, the Dixie Chicks, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Bright Eyes, the Dave Matthews Band, Jackson Browne, and other musicians. All concerts were to be held in swing states, to benefit the liberalism political organization group America Coming Together and to encourage people to register and vote. A finale was held in Washington, D.C., bringing many of the artists together. Several days later, Springsteen held one more such concert in New Jersey, when polls showed that state surprisingly close. While in past years Springsteen had played benefits for causes in which he believed against nuclear energy, for Vietnam veterans, Amnesty International, and the Christic Institute he had always refrained from explicitly endorsing candidates for political office (indeed he had rejected the efforts of Walter Mondale to attract an endorsement during the 1984 Reagan Born in the U.S.A. flap). This new stance led to criticism and praise from the expected partisan sources. Springsteens No Surrender became the main campaign theme song for John Kerrys unsuccessful presidential campaign; in the last days of the campaign, he performed acoustic versions of the song and some of his other old songs at Kerry rallies.
An acoustic guitar number during the solo Devils & Dust Tour performance at the Festhalle Frankfurt, June 15, 2005.
Devils & Dust was released on April 26, 2005, and was recorded without the E Street Band. It is a low-key, mostly acoustic album, in the same vein as Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad although with a little more instrumentation. Some of the material was written almost 10 years earlier during, or shortly after, the Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, a couple of them being performed then but never released. The title track concerns an ordinary soldiers feelings and fears during the Iraq War. Starbucks rejected a co-branding deal for the album, due in part to some sexually explicit content but also because of Springsteens anti-corporate politics. The album entered the album charts at No. 1 in 10 countries (United States, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Ireland). Springsteen began the solo Devils & Dust Tour at the same time as the albums release, playing both small and large venues. Attendance was disappointing in a few regions, and everywhere (other than in Europe) tickets were easier to get than in the past. Unlike his mid-1990s solo tour, he performed on piano, electric piano, pump organ, autoharp, ukulele, banjo, electric guitar, and stomping board, as well as acoustic guitar and harmonica, adding variety to the solo sound. (Offstage synthesizer, guitar, and percussion were also used for some songs.) Unearthly renditions of Reason to Believe, The Promised Land, and Suicides Dream Baby Dream jolted audiences to attention, while rarities, frequent set list changes, and a willingness to keep trying even through audible piano mistakes kept most of his loyal audiences happy.
In November 2005, Sirius Satellite Radio started a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week radio station on Channel 10 called E Street Radio. This channel featured commercial-free Bruce Springsteen music, including rare tracks, interviews, and daily concerts of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band recorded throughout their career.
Springsteen and The Sessions Band performing on their tour at the Fila Forum, Milan, Italy on May 12, 2006.
In April 2006, Springsteen released We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, an American roots music project focused around a big folk sound treatment of 15 songs popularized by the radical musical activism of Pete Seeger. It was recorded with a large ensemble of musicians including only Patti Scialfa, Soozie Tyrell, and The Miami Horns from past efforts. In contrast to previous albums, this was recorded in only three one-day sessions, and frequently one can hear Springsteen calling out key changes live as the band explores its way through the tracks. The Bruce Springsteen with The Seeger Sessions Band Tour began the same month, featuring the 18-strong ensemble of musicians dubbed The Seeger Sessions Band (and later shortened to the The Sessions Band). Seeger Sessions material was heavily featured, as well as a handful of (usually drastically rearranged) Springsteen numbers. The tour proved very popular in Europe, selling out everywhere and receiving some excellent reviews, but newspapers reported that a number of U.S. shows suffered from sparse attendance. By the end of 2006, the Seeger Sessions tour toured Europe twice and toured America for only a short span. Bruce Springsteen with The Sessions Band: Live in Dublin, containing selections from three nights of November 2006 shows at the The Point Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, was released the following June.
Springsteen performing with drummer Max Weinberg behind him, on the Magic Tour stop at Veterans Memorial Arena, Jacksonville, Florida, August 15, 2008.
Springsteens next album, titled Magic, was released on October 2, 2007. Recorded with the E Street Band, it featured 10 new Springsteen songs plus Long Walk Home, performed once with the Sessions band, and a hidden track (the first included on a Springsteen studio release), Terrys Song, a tribute to Springsteens long-time assistant Terry Magovern who died on July 30, 2007. The first single, Radio Nowhere, was made available for a free download on August 28. On October 7, Magic debuted at number 1 in Ireland and the UK. Greatest Hits reentered the Irish charts at number 57, and Live in Dublin almost cracked the top 20 in Norway again. Sirius Satellite Radio also restarted E Street Radio on Channel 10 on September 27, 2007, in anticipation of Magic. Radio conglomerate Clear Channel Communications was alleged to have sent an edict to its classic rock stations to not play any songs from the new album, while continuing to play older Springsteen material. However, Clear Channel Adult Alternative (or AAA) station KBCO did play tracks from the album, undermining the allegations of a corporate blackout. The Springsteen and E Street Band Magic Tour began at the Hartford Civic Center with the albums release and was routed through North America and Europe. Springsteen and the band performed live on NBCs Today Show in advance of the opener. Longtime E Street Band organist Danny Federici went off the tour in November 2007 due to melanoma; he died on April 17, 2008, after a three-year battle with the disease.
Recent events
In April 2008, Springsteen announced his endorsement of U.S. Senator Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign. In a video shot at an Ohio rally for Obama, Springsteen discussed the importance of truth, transparency and integrity in government, the right of every American to have a job, a living wage, to be educated in a decent school, and a life filled with the dignity of work, the promise and the sanctity of homeBut today those freedoms have been damaged and curtailed by eight years of a thoughtless, reckless and morally-adrift administration.
On June 18, 2008, Springsteen appeared live from Europe at the Tim Russert tribute at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to play one of Russerts favorite songs, Thunder Road. Springsteen dedicated the song to Russert, who was one of Springsteens biggest fans.[citation needed]
Springsteen made a few solo acoustic performances in support of Obamas campaign in October 2008, culminating with a November 2 rally where he debuted Working On A Dream in a duet with Scialfa.
Springsteen at a rally for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama
Cleveland, Ohio on November 2, 2008
On November 4, the first song played over the loudspeakers after Obamas victory speech as president-elect in Chicagos Grant Park was The Rising.
Springsteens Working on a Dream album was released in late January 2009.
Springsteen was the musical opener for the We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18, 2009 which was attended by over 400,000. He performed The Rising with an all-female choir. Later he performed Woody Guthries This Land Is Your Land with Pete Seeger.
On January 11, 2009, Springsteen won the Golden Globe Award for Best Song for The Wrestler, from the Mickey Rourke film by the same name.
Springsteen performed at the halftime show at Super Bowl XLIII on February 1, 2009, agreeing to do it after many previous offers: t was sort of, well, if we don do it now, what are we waiting for? I want to do it while I alive.50] A few days before the game, Springsteen gave a rare press conference, where he promised a twelve-minute party. When asked if he would be nervous performing before such a large audience, Springsteen alluded to the We Are One concert, which took place at the Lincoln Memorial: Youl have a lot of crazy football fans, but you won have Lincoln staring over your shoulder. That takes some of the pressure off. His 12:45 set, with the E Street Band and the Miami Horns, included abbreviated renditions of Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out, Born to Run, Working on a Dream, and Glory Days, the latter complete with football references. The set of appearances and promotional activities led Springsteen to say, This has probably been the busiest month of my life.
On April 1, 2009, Springsteen kicked off the Working on a Dream Tour in San Jose, California. The tour was hit by controversy in February 2009 when ticket site and tour partner Ticketmaster was found to be redirecting customers to their subsidiary TicketsNow, where tickets were being sold at inflated prices, despite the availability of face-value tickets elsewhere. Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff issued a swift apology, following a furious statement from Springsteen, who accused the site of the abuse of our fans and our trust. The tours shows featured few songs from the new album, with instead set lists dominated by Springsteen classics and selections reflecting the ongoing late-2000s recession. The tour also featured Springsteen playing songs requested by audience members holding up signs usually garage rock or punk rock classics or older, more obscure entries in Springsteens back catalog in a practice dating back to the final stages of the Magic Tour. Drummer Max Weinberg was replaced for some shows by his 18-year-old son Jay Weinberg, so that the former could serve his role as bandleader on the debuting The Tonight Show with Conan OBrien.
Springsteen was part of the lineup of The Clearwater Concert, a celebration of Pete Seegers 90th birthday which took place on May 3, 2009 at Madison Square Garden.
Fireworks go off at the conclusion of the E! Street! Band! exhortation during the final shows at Giants Stadium.
During the Working on a Dream Tour, Springsteen and the band made their first real foray in the world of music festivals, headlining nights at the Pinkpop Festival in the Netherlands, the Bonnaroo Music Festival in the United States where Springsteen also sat in with Phish for three songs and the Glastonbury Festival and Hard Rock Calling in the UK. He also was the headliner of the Festival des Vieilles Charrues in Brittany, France in July, his only tour stop in France. His son Evan participated in the concert, playing guitar.
During a stretch of five final shows at his homestate Giants Stadium, Bruce Springsteen opened the shows with a brand new song dedicated to the old lady (and told from its perspective), named Wrecking Ball. The song highlights the historic stadium, and his Jersey roots. The stand, as well as some other shows on the U.S. third leg of the tour, featured full album presentations of Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, or Born in the U.S.A.
The tour ended as scheduled in Buffalo, NY in November 2009 amid speculation that it was the last performance ever by the E Street Band, but during the show Springsteen said it was goodbye or a little while.
In October, 2009, Bruce Springsteen was among the headline acts of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fames 25th anniversary benefit concert along with artists like U2, Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin.
On December 6, 2009, Springsteen was among the recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors, an annual award to figures from the world of arts for their contribution to American culture.. This is probably the highest honor Mr. Springsteen has received yet. Prior to the official ceremony at the Kennedy Center, the six cultural icons were hosted by President Obama and Ms. Michelle Obama. During the speech by the President, he talked about how Springsteen has incorporated the life of regular Americans in his expansive pallette of songs and how his concerts are beyond the typical rock-and-roll concerts, how apart from being high-energy concerts they are communions. President Obama ended with the remark: On days like the We Are One concert and today we are reminded that while I am the president, He is The Boss. During the official awards show on December 6, 2009, tributes were paid by several well-known celebrities like Jon Stewart, Ben Stiller, Eddie Vedder, Sting and Melissa Etheridge.
Jon Stewart opened with a funny albeit touching tribute to Mr. Springsteen: I am not a music critic. Nor historian, nor archivist. I cannot tell you where Bruce Springsteen falls in the pantheon of the American songbook. I cannot illuminate the context of his work, or its roots in the folk and oral history traditions of our great nations. But I am from New Jersey. So, I can tell you what I believe. And what I believe is that Bob Dylan and James Brown had a baby. Yes! And they abandoned this child, as you can imagine at the timeinterracial, same sex relationships being what they werethey abandoned this baby by the side of the road between the exit interchanges 8A and 9 on the Jersey Turnpikethat child was Bruce Springsteen. He continued, I believe that Bruce Springsteen is an unprecedented combination of lyrical eloquence, musical mastery and sheer unbridled, unadulterated joy. Exuberance in the act of telling stories so familiar, stories that have never been told so well or so uniquely. And I know he hating this right now. He a modest man, and he doesn like sitting there in that little box, with his little suit, wearing a little rainbow dreamcatcher or whatever they have on therehe doesn like it. He wishes he had his guitar and that I would shut up, but I will not. He is the BossBut I didn understand his music for a long time, until I began to yearn. Until I began to question the things that I was making and doing in my own life. Until I realized that it wasn just about the joyful parade on stage and the theatrics. It was about stories of lives that could be changed. And that the only status that you could fail to achieve is the status quo. The only thing, the only failure in life was not to make the effort to change our station. And it resonated with me because, and I say this truly to him I would not be here, God knows, not even in this business if it were not for the inspirational words and music of Bruce Springsteen.
Golden Globe Award-winning writer Ron Kovic then took the stage, explaining how he first met Bruce Springsteen at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Hollywood in 1978. A chance encounter led to an exchange of the artists work, and a friendship was born between the Born on the Fourth of July author and Vietnam Veteran and the Born in the U.S.A. musician. Kovic introduced Springsteen musical tribute, which began with the Rob Mathes All-Star band performing 10th Avenue Freeze Out, followed by Grammy Award-winning musician John Mellencamp crooning Born in the U.S.A.. It was then followed by a medley of My Father House, Glory Days and I on Fire by multi-Grammy winners Ben Harper and Jennifer Nettles, accompanied by the Rob Mathes band. Grammy Award and Academy Award-winning musician Melissa Etheridge rocked out a concert-version of Born to Run, followed by Grammy Award and Golden Globe Award-winning singer Eddie Vedder explosive rendition of My City of Ruins. Finally, musical powerhouse Sting, himself a multiple Grammy, Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner, ended the night with a memorable performance of The Rising, joined by The Joyce Garrett Choir and the rest of the performers for the evening rousing conclusion. Throughout the tribute show, President Obama, Ms. Obama and the other recipients looked on admiringly at the towering personality of Mr. Springsteen.
On January 22, 2010, Bruce joined many well-known artists to perform on Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief, organized by George Clooney to raise money to help the victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
The 2000s ended with Springsteen being named one of eight Artists of the Decade by Rolling Stone magazine and with Springsteens tours ranking him fourth among artists in total concert grosses for the decade.
Personal life
Springsteen family greets Obama family on stage at rally in Cleveland, Ohio on November 2, 2008.
Springsteen was a bachelor until the age of 35, when he married 25 year old Julianne Phillips (born May 6, 1960) in Lake Oswego, Oregon on May 13, 1985. The marriage helped her acting career flourish, although the two were opposites in background, and his traveling took its toll on their relationship. The final blow came when Bruce began an affair with Patti Scialfa (born July 29, 1953), whom he had dated briefly in 1984 shortly after she joined the band. Phillips and Springsteen separated in the spring of 1988, and on August 30, 1988, Julianne filed for divorce. The Springsteen/Phillips divorce was finalized on March 1, 1989.
After his wife filed for divorce in 1988, Bruce began living with Scialfa. Springsteen received much criticism for the hastiness in which he and Scialfa took their relationship. In a 1995 interview with The Advocate, Springsteen spoke about the negative publicity the couple subsequently received. Its a strange society that assumes it has the right to tell people whom they should love and whom they shouldnt. But the truth is, I basically ignored the entire thing as much as I could. I said, Well, all I know is, this feels real, and maybe I have got a mess going here in some fashion, but thats life. In 1990, Springsteen and Scialfa welcomed their first child, son Evan James. They were expecting their second child, daughter Jessica Rae (born December 30, 1991), when Bruce and Patti married on June 8, 1991. I went through a divorce, and it was really difficult and painful and I was very frightened about getting married again. So part of me said, Hey, what does it matter? But it does matter. Its very different than just living together. First of all, stepping up publicly- which is what you do: You get your license, you do all the social rituals- is a part of your place in society and in some way part of societys acceptance of youPatti and I both found that it did mean something. The couples youngest child, Sam Ryan, was born on January 5, 1994. The family lives in Rumson, New Jersey, and owns a horse farm in nearby Colts Neck. Springsteen also owns two adjacent homes in Wellington, Florida, a wealthy horse community near West Palm Beach. His eldest son, Evan, is currently a sophomore at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, a village in Newton, Massachusetts. His daughter Jessica Springsteen is a nationally-ranked champion equestrian.
In November 2000, Springsteen filed legal action against Jeff Burgar which accused him of registering the domain brucespringsteen.com (along with several other celebrity domains) in bad faith to funnel web users to his Celebrity 1000 portal site. Once the legal complaint was filed, Burgar pointed the domain to a Springsteen biography and message board. In February 2001, Springsteen lost his dispute with Burgar. A WIPO panel ruled 2 to 1 in favor of Burgar.
The October 26, 2009 show for the Working on a Dream Tour in Kansas City, Missouri was canceled an hour before its scheduled start time due to the death of Lenny Sullivan, Springsteens cousin and assistant road manager.
Springsteen has led a relatively quiet and private life for a well-known popular performer and artist. He moved from Los Angeles to New Jersey in the early 1990s specifically to raise a family in a non-paparazzi environment. The Super Bowl XLIII press conference regarding the halftime show took place more than 25 years since his last press conference. However, he has appeared in few radio interviews, most notably on NPR and BBC. 60 minutes aired his last extensive interview on TV before his tour to support his album, Magic.
E Street Band
Main article: E Street Band
The E Street Band is considered to have started in October 1972, even though it was not officially known as such until September 1974. The E Street Band was inactive from the end of 1988 through early 1999, except for a brief reunion in 1995.
Current members
Bruce Springsteen lead vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano
Garry Tallent bass guitar, tuba
Clarence Big Man Clemons saxophone, percussion, backing vocals
Max Weinberg drums, percussion (joined September 1974)
Roy Bittan piano, synthesizer (joined September 1974)
Steven Van Zandt lead guitar, backing vocals, mandolin (officially joined July 1975 after playing in previous bands; left in 1984 to go solo; rejoined in early 1995, however made appearances during the Other Band Tour).
Nils Lofgren guitar, pedal steel guitar, backing vocals (replaced Steve Van Zandt in June 1984; remained in group after Van Zandt returned)
Patti Scialfa backing and duet vocals, acoustic guitar, percussion (joined June 1984; became Springsteens wife in 1991)
Soozie Tyrell violin, acoustic guitar, percussion, backing vocals (joined 2002, occasional appearances before that)
Charles Giordano organ, accordion, glockenspiel (originally a Sessions Band member, joined the E Street Band on a temporary basis in late 2007, during the illness of Danny Federici. Continued playing with the E Street Band after Federici died in April 2008.)
Former members
Vini Mad Dog Lopez drums (inception through February 1974, when asked to resign)
David Sancious keyboards (June 1973 to August 1974)
Ernest Boom Carter drums (February to August 1974)
Suki Lahav violin, backing vocals (September 1974 to March 1975)
Danny Federici organ, accordion, glockenspiel (died on April 17, 2008, melanoma)
Jay Weinberg drums, percussion (substituting for his father during parts of the 2009 tour)
Film
Music used in films
Springsteens music has long been intertwined with film. His music was first linked with the silver screen in the 1983 John Sayles film Baby, Its You, which featured several songs from Born to Run. The relationship Springsteen established with Sayles would re-surface in later years, with Sayles directing videos for songs from Born in the U.S.A. and Tunnel of Love. The song (Just Around the Corner to the) Light of Day was written for the early Michael J. Fox/Joan Jett vehicle Light of Day.
His original work has frequently been used in films and he won an Oscar for his song Streets of Philadelphia from the Jonathan Demme film Philadelphia (1993). He was nominated for a second Oscar for Dead Man Walkin, from the movie Dead Man Walking (1995).
His song Missing plays during the opening credits of Sean Penns 1995 movie, The Crossing Guard. It was released in 2003 on The Essential Bruce Springsteen.
His song Secret Garden, which first appeared on 1995s Greatest Hits, was used in Cameron Crowes 1996 film Jerry Maguire.
Although it doesnt appear on the soundtrack album, his song Iceman was used in the 2007 movie In the Land of Women.
Springsteen also wrote an eponymous song for Darren Aronofskys 2008 film The Wrestler. The song was awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and nominated for the MTV Movie Award as Best Song From a Movie.
The album The River was also well mentioned in the movie Reign Over Me with Adam Sandler. Two songs from that very album, Drive All Night and Out In The Streets, were played as background music.
In the 1997 film Cop Land, Sylvester Stallones character plays the songs Drive All Night and Stolen Car from The River on his turntable.
His track, Hungry Heart was used as a background song in the movies A Perfect Storm, The Wedding Singer and Risky Business. The track, The Fuse from his album, The Rising, was used during the end credits of the Spike Lee film, 25th Hour.
More recently, his song, Lucky Town from his album of the same name was used in the Eric Bana and Drew Barrymore starring movie, Lucky You in the starting title track. The 2007 movie, In the land of women used the song, Iceman from the album Tracks as part of its OST.
Films inspired by music
In turn, films have been inspired by his music, including The Indian Runner, written and directed by Sean Penn, which Penn has specifically noted as being inspired by Springsteens song Highway Patrolman.
Kevin Smith is an admitted fan of fellow New Jersey native Springsteen and named his film Jersey Girl after the Tom Waits song which Springsteen made famous. The song was also used on the soundtrack.
Acting
Springsteen made his first on-screen appearance as a cameo in High Fidelity and it was voted Best Cameo in a Movie at the MTV Movie Awards.
Discography
Main article: Bruce Springsteen discography
Major studio albums (along with their chart positions in the U.S. Billboard 200 at the time of release):
1973: Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. ()
1973: The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle ()
1975: Born to Run (#3)
1978: Darkness on the Edge of Town (#5)
1980: The River (#1)
1982: Nebraska (#3)
1984: Born in the U.S.A. (#1)
1987: Tunnel of Love (#1)
1992: Human Touch (#2)
1992: Lucky Town (#3)
1995: The Ghost of Tom Joad (#11)
2002: The Rising (#1)
2005: Devils & Dust (#1)
2006: We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (#3)
2007: Magic (#1)
2009: Working on a Dream (#1)
Awards and recognition
Bruce Springsteen (second from right) was among the five recipients of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors
Grammy Awards
Springsteen has won 20 Grammy Awards, as follows (years shown are the year the award was given for, not the year in which the ceremony was held):
Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male, 1984, Dancing in the Dark
Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male, 1987, Tunnel of Love
Song of the Year, 1994, Streets of Philadelphia
Best Rock Song, 1994, Streets of Philadelphia
Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo, 1994, Streets of Philadelphia
Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television, 1994, Streets of Philadelphia
Best Contemporary Folk Album, 1996, The Ghost of Tom Joad
Best Rock Album, 2002, The Rising
Best Rock Song, 2002, The Rising
Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, 2002, The Rising
Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, 2003, Disorder in the House (with Warren Zevon)
Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2004, Code of Silence
Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2005, Devils & Dust
Best Traditional Folk Album, 2006, The Seeger Sessions: We Shall Overcome
Best Long Form Music Video, 2006, Wings For Wheels: The Making Of Born to Run
Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2007, Radio Nowhere
Best Rock Song, 2007, Radio Nowhere
Best Rock Instrumental Performance, 2007, Once Upon a Time in the West
Best Rock Song, 2008, Girls in Their Summer Clothes
Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2009, Working on a Dream
Only one of these awards has been one of the cross-genre major ones (Song, Record, or Album of the Year); he has been nominated a number of other times for the majors, but failed to win.
Golden Globe Awards
Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for Streets of Philadelphia in 1994.
Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for The Wrestler in 2009.
Academy Awards
Academy Award for Best Original Song, 1993, Streets of Philadelphia from Philadelphia.
Emmy Awards
The Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live In New York City HBO special won two technical Emmy Awards in 2001.
Other recognition
Polar Music Prize in 1997.
Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 1999.
Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, 1999.
Inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame, 2007.
Born to Run named The unofficial youth anthem of New Jersey by the New Jersey state legislature; something Springsteen always found to be ironic, considering that the song is about leaving New Jersey.
The minor planet 23990, discovered Sept. 4, 1999, by I. P. Griffin at Auckland, New Zealand, was officially named in his honor.
Ranked #23 on Rolling Stone magazines 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
Made Time magazines 100 Most Influential People Of The Year 2008 list.
Won Critics Choice Award for Best Song with The Wrestler in 2009.
Performed at the Super Bowl XLIII half time show.
Kennedy Center Honors, 2009.
Influence
In addition to his noted influence on music in his native New Jersey, Springsteen is also cited as an influence by Bon Jovi, Arcade Fire, Gaslight Anthem, The Constantines, The Hold Steady, The National, Kings of Leon, The Killers, U2, Johnny Cash in his later recordings, and countless others. His songs have been covered by diverse artists such as Melissa Etheridge, Johnny Cash, McFLY, Tegan and Sara, Damien Jurado, Aimee Mann, Social Distortion, Rage Against The Machine, Ben Harper, Eric Bachmann, Josh Ritter, Frank Turner, and Hank Williams III, in addition to above-noted bands like Arcade Fire and The National.
See also
List of best selling music artists
List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart
References
Alterman, Eric. It Aint No Sin To Be Glad Youre Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen. Little Brown, 1999. ISBN 0-316-03885-7.
Coles, Robert. Bruce Springsteens America: The People Listening, a Poet Singing. Random House, 2005. ISBN 0-375-50559-8.
Cross, Charles R. Backstreets: Springsteen the man and his music Harmony Books, New York 1989/1992. ISBN 0-517-58929-X. Contains 15+ interviews and a complete list of all Springsteen songs including unreleased compositions. Complete lising of all concerts 19651990 most of them with tracklists. Hundreds of previously unreleased high quality color pictures.
Cullen, Jim. Born in the U.S.A.: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition. 1997; Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005. New edition of 1997 study book places Springsteens work in the broader context of American history and culture. ISBN 0-8195-6761-2
Eliot, Marc with Appel, Mike. Down Thunder Road. Simon & Schuster, 1992. ISBN 0-671-86898-5.
Graff, Gary. The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen A to E to Z. Visible Ink, 2005. ISBN 1-57859-151-1.
Guterman, Jimmy. Runaway American Dream: Listening to Bruce Springsteen. Da Capo, 2005. ISBN 0-306-81397-1.
Hilburn, Robert. Springsteen. Rolling Stone Press, 1985. ISBN 0-684-18456-7.
Knobler, Peter with special assistance from Greg Mitchell. Who Is Bruce Springsteen and Why Are We Saying All These Wonderful Things About Him?, Crawdaddy, March 1973.
Marsh, Dave. Bruce Springsteen: Two Hearts: The Definitive Biography, 19722003. Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-96928-X. (Consolidation of two previous Marsh biographies, Born to Run (1981) and Glory Days (1987).)
Wolff, Daniel. 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land. Bloomsbury, 2005. ISBN 1-58234-509-0.
Further reading
Greetings from E Street: The Story of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Chronicle Books, 2006. ISBN 0-8118-5348-9.
Days of Hope and Dreams: An Intimate Portrait of Bruce Springsteen. Billboard Books, 2003. ISBN 0-8230-8387-X.
Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader. Penguin, 2004. ISBN 0-14-200354-9.
Runaway American Dream: Listening to Bruce
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WASHINGTON Broadcaster Glenn Beck and tea party activists have a right to rally in the nation's capital but not to distort Martin Luther King Jr.'s vision, the Rev. Al Sharpton said Friday.
Sharpton described the demonstration planned for Saturday by Beck and his supporters as an anti-government rally advocating states' rights. And he said that goes against the message in King's famous "I Have a Dream" speech, in which the civil rights leader appealed to the federal government to ensure equality.
Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally will be held at the Lincoln Memorial, where King delivered his speech exactly 47 years earlier. Beck and other organizers say the aim is to pay tribute to America's military personnel and others "who embody our nation's founding principles of integrity, truth and honor." The broadcaster toured the site Friday as supporters cheered.
Sharpton wasn't the only one upset with circumstance surrounding the event.
Leaders in the nation's capital said they were offended by a tea party blogger's warning to those attending to avoid two of Washington's subway lines because they go through certain neighborhoods. Many parts of the city are safe, he wrote, "but why chance it if you don't know where you are?"
D.C. Council Chairman Vincent Gray, who is running for mayor, invited visitors into the city's neighborhoods and said Friday he would urge any tea partiers he meets to ride the subway.
"Frankly, we need to put an end to that venom," he said at a news conference. "This is a city of 600,000 people people who enjoy living here, people who pay their taxes."
"Let's not let them get away with portraying the District of Columbia as some kind of frontier city," Gray said. "We live in peace."
The original post early Monday morning by blogger Bruce Majors was offered as a visitor's guide for those coming to the district for the rally. It offered hints on cheap eats, free wireless Internet spots and the home addresses of Democratic political leaders, with the note, "Feel free to protest!"
Majors also wrote that the population includes "refugees from every country, as the families of embassy staffs of third world countries tend to stay in D.C. whenever a revolution in their homeland means that anyone in their family would be in danger if they went back."
He also wrote that taxi drivers and waiters and waitresses frequently are from foreign countries.
Majors, who said he has lived in D.C. since 1980, did not respond to telephone messages requesting comment Friday.
On Saturday, Sharpton and others plan their own rally at a high school and a march to the site of a planned King memorial not far from the Lincoln Memorial to mark the anniversary of his speech.
During a news conference Friday, Sharpton questioned whether Beck and others understand King's words.
"They have the right to rally. But what they don't have the right to do is distort what Dr. King's dream was about," he said.
He said King's legacy is not owned by black people alone, and others can have different views of him. But he said they can't have different views of King's speech.
"His speech says clearly that he wanted to see a nation where the federal government protects us from those and states that would not uphold our civil rights," Sharpton said.
"You can't have a march telling government to leave us alone and say you're reclaiming a march where they came to appeal to government to protect us," he said. "They're having an anti-government march on a day that King came to appeal to government. You can't have it both ways."
The Rev. Walter Fauntroy, who formerly represented the District of Columbia in the U.S. House, said Beck's rally organizers "seized the hallowed ground of the 47th anniversary ... to promote their universal vision of exclusion."
"Their purpose is to turn the clock back in a time in America" when blacks and other minorities lacked rights, he said.
"It would be wrong for us to allow those who espouse the universal value of exclusion to hijack the site and the message of that marvelous day and to use it against the very vision that Martin Luther King Jr. articulated so magnificently," he said.
___
Online:
Tea partiers Blog: http://www.teapartiers.blogspot.com
http://www.nationalactionnetwork.net
http://www.glennbeck.com/828

D.C. Comics is returning to the starting line. They've just realized something that mylar-bag hoarding fanboys have known for time immemorial: continuity is a bitch, a crutch in telling stories about superheroes who can't profitably age along with anyone reading along at home. Bruce Wayne can't really ascend to his fifties; Peter Parker doesn't make sense beyond maybe the age of 35. Traditionally, the crutch of continuity has meant that every couple of years the D.C. powers-that-be cook up some sort of crossover event that allows for the jury-rigging of continuity: your Zero Hours, your Crises On Infinite Earths.

It was just a week ago that we raved here on Pop & Hiss at the spectacle that was the Bruce Springsteen gig at Chicago's United Center. A three hour epic rock concert with a tasty nugget lodged in the middle: a co

Bruce Springsteen
Life and career
19491972: Early years
Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, and spent his childhood and high school years in Freehold Borough. He lived off South Street in Freehold Borough and attended Freehold Borough High School. His father, Douglas Frederick Springsteen, was of Dutch and Irish ancestry and worked, among other vocations, as a bus driver; his surname is Dutch for stepping stone. His mother, Adele Ann (ne Zerilli), was a legal secretary and was of Italian ancestry. His grandfather was born in Vico Equense, a city near Naples. He has two younger sisters, Virginia and Pamela. Pamela had a brief film career, but left acting to pursue still photography full time; she took photos for the Human Touch and Lucky Town albums.
Raised a Roman Catholic, Springsteen attended the St. Rose of Lima Catholic school in Freehold Borough, where he was at odds with both the nuns and other students, even though much of his later music reflects a deep Catholic ethos and included many rock-influenced, traditional Irish-Catholic hymns.
In ninth grade, he transferred to the public Freehold Regional High School, but did not fit in there, either. Old teachers have said he was a loner, who wanted nothing more than to play his guitar. He completed high school, but felt so uncomfortable that he skipped his own graduation ceremony. He briefly attended Ocean County College, but dropped out.
Springsteen had been inspired to take up music at the age of seven after seeing Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show. At 13, he bought his first guitar for ; later, his mother took out a loan to buy the 16-year-old Springsteen a Kent guitar, as he later memorialized in his song The Wish.
In 1965, he went to the house of Tex and Marion Vinyard, who sponsored young bands in town. They helped him become lead guitarist and subsequently the lead singer of The Castiles. The Castiles recorded two original songs at a public recording studio in Brick Township and played a variety of venues, including Cafe Wha? in Greenwich Village. Marion Vinyard said that she believed the young Springsteen when he promised he would make it big.
Called for induction when he was 19, Springsteen failed his physical examination and didnt serve in Vietnam. In an interview in Rolling Stone magazine in 1984, he said, When I got on the bus to go take my physical, I thought one thing: I aint goin. He suffered a concussion in a motorcycle accident when he was 17, and this together with his crazy behaviour at induction and not taking the tests, was enough to get him a 4F.
New Jersey beach towns such as Asbury Park, New Jersey inspired the themes of ordinary life in Bruce Springsteens music.
In the late 1960s, Springsteen performed briefly in a power trio known as Earth, playing in clubs in New Jersey. Springsteen acquired the nickname The Boss during this period as when he played club gigs with a band he took on the task of collecting the bands nightly pay and distributing it amongst his bandmates. Springsteen, however, has never liked this nickname, due to his dislike of bosses. Lately, however, he seems to have accepted the nickname. Many recent concerts have audiences making up various signs on banners, license plates and so on saying, Boss Time. Previously he had the nickname Doctor. From 1969 through early 1971, Springsteen performed with Steel Mill, which also featured Danny Federici, Vini Lopez, Vinnie Roslin and later Steve Van Zandt and Robbin Thompson. They went on to play the mid-Atlantic college circuit, and also briefly in California. In January 1970 well-known San Francisco Examiner music critic Philip Elwood gave Springsteen credibility in his glowing assessment of Steel Mill: I have never been so overwhelmed by totally unknown talent. Elwood went on to praise their cohesive musicality and, in particular, singled out Springsteen as a most impressive composer. During this time Springsteen also performed regularly at small clubs in Asbury Park and along the Jersey Shore, quickly gathering a cult following. Other acts followed over the next two years, as Springsteen sought to shape a unique and genuine musical and lyrical style: Dr Zoom & the Sonic Boom (earlyid 1971), Sundance Blues Band (mid 1971), and The Bruce Springsteen Band (mid 1971id 1972). With the addition of pianist David Sancious, the core of what would later become the E Street Band was formed, with occasional temporary additions such as horn sections, The Zoomettes (a group of female backing vocalists for Dr Zoom) and Southside Johnny Lyon on harmonica. Musical genres explored included blues, R&B, jazz, church music, early rockn'roll, and soul. His prolific songwriting ability, with more words in some individual songs than other artists had in whole albums, brought his skill to the attention of several people who were about to change his life: new managers Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos, and legendary Columbia Records talent scout John Hammond, who, under Appels pressure, auditioned Springsteen in May 1972.
Even after Springsteen gained international acclaim, his New Jersey roots showed through in his music, and he often praised the great state of New Jersey in his live shows. Drawing on his extensive local appeal, he routinely sold out consecutive nights in major New Jersey and Philadelphia venues. He also made many surprise appearances at The Stone Pony and other shore nightclubs over the years, becoming the foremost exponent of the Jersey Shore sound.
19721974: Initial struggle for success
Springsteen signed a record deal with Columbia Records in 1972, with the help of John Hammond, who had signed Bob Dylan to the same label a decade earlier. Springsteen brought many of his New Jerseyased colleagues into the studio with him, thus forming the E Street Band (although it would not be formally named as such for a couple more years). His debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., released in January 1973, established him as a critical favorite, though sales were slow. Because of Springsteens lyrical poeticism and folk rockooted music exemplified on tracks like Blinded by the Light and For You, as well as the Columbia and Hammond connections, critics initially compared Springsteen to Bob Dylan. He sings with a freshness and urgency I havent heard since I was rocked by Like a Rolling Stone, wrote Crawdaddy magazine editor Peter Knobler in Springsteens first interview/profile, in March 1973. Crawdaddy discovered Springsteen in the rock press and was his earliest champion. (Springsteen and the E Street Band acknowledged by giving a private performance at the Crawdaddy 10th Anniversary Party in New York City in June 1976.) Music critic Lester Bangs wrote in Creem, 1975, that when Springsteens first album was released..many of us dismissed it: he wrote like Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, sang like Van Morrison and Robbie Robertson, and led a band that sounded like Van Morrisons. The track Spirit in the Night especially showed Morrisons influence, while Lost in the Flood was the first of many portraits of Vietnam veterans and Growin Up his first take on the recurring theme of adolescence.
In September 1973 his second album, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, was released, again to critical acclaim but no commercial success. Springsteens songs became grander in form and scope, with the E Street Band providing a less folky, more R&B vibe and the lyrics often romanticizing teenage street life. 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) and Incident on 57th Street would become fan favorites, and the long, rousing Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) continues to rank among Springsteens most beloved concert numbers.
In the May 22, 1974, issue of Bostons The Real Paper, music critic Jon Landau wrote after seeing a performance at the Harvard Square Theater, I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time. Landau subsequently became Springsteens manager and producer, helping to finish the epic new album, Born to Run. Given an enormous budget in a last-ditch effort at a commercially viable record, Springsteen became bogged down in the recording process while striving for a wall of sound production. But, fed by the release of an early mix of Born to Run to progressive rock radio, anticipation built toward the albums release. All in all the album took more than 14 months to record, with six months alone spent on the song Born To Run. During this time Springsteen battled with anger and frustration over the album, saying he heard sounds in [his] head that he could not explain to the others in the studio. It was during these recording sessions that Miami Steve Van Zandt would stumble into the studio just in time to help Springsteen organize the horn section on Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out (it is his only written contribution to the album), and eventually led to his joining the E Street Band.[citation needed] Van Zandt had been a long-time friend of Springsteen, as well as a collaborator on earlier musical projects, and understood where he was coming from, which helped him to translate some of the sounds Springsteen was hearing. Still, by the end of the grueling recording sessions, Springsteen was not satisfied, and, upon first hearing the finished album, threw the record into the alley and told Jon Landau he would rather just cut the album live at The Bottom Line, a place he often played.[citation needed]
The woman in his life during this time was part-time-live-in 20-year-old Karen Darvin of Dallas, Texas, who was in New York City pursuing a career in dance.
19751983: Breakthrough
On August 13, 1975, Springsteen and the E Street Band began a five-night, 10-show stand at New Yorks Bottom Line club. The engagement attracted major media attention, was broadcast live on WNEW-FM, and convinced many skeptics that Springsteen was for real. (Decades later, Rolling Stone Magazine would name the stand as one of the 50 Moments That Changed Rock and Roll.) With the release of Born to Run on August 25, 1975, Springsteen finally found success. The album peaked at number 3 on the Billboard 200, and while there were no hit singles, Born to Run (Billboard #23), Thunder Road, Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out (Billboard #83), and Jungleland all received massive album-oriented rock airplay and remain perennial favorites on many classic rock stations. The songwriting and recording was more disciplined than before, while still maintaining an epic feel. With its panoramic imagery, thundering production and desperate optimism, Born to Run is considered by some fans to be among the best rock and roll albums of all time and Springsteens finest work. It established him as a sincere and dynamic rock and roll personality who spoke for and in the voice of a large part of the rock audience. To cap off the triumph, Springsteen appeared on the covers of both Time and Newsweek in the same week, on October 27 of that year. So great did the wave of publicity become that Springsteen eventually rebelled against it during his first venture overseas, tearing down promotional posters before a concert appearance in London.
A legal battle with former manager Mike Appel kept Springsteen out of the studio for over two years, during which time he kept the E Street Band together through extensive touring across the U.S. Despite the optimistic fervor with which he often performed, the new songs he was writing and often debuting on stage had taken a more somber tone than much of his previous work. Reaching settlement with Appel in 1977, Springsteen finally returned to the studio, and the subsequent sessions produced Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978). Musically, this album was a turning point in Springsteens career. Gone were the raw, rapid-fire lyrics, outsized characters and long, multi-part musical compositions of the first two albums; now the songs were leaner and more carefully drawn and began to reflect Springsteens growing intellectual and political awareness. Some fans consider Darkness Springsteens best and most consistent record; tracks such as Badlands and The Promised Land became concert staples for decades to come, while the track Prove It All Night received a significant amount of album rock radio airplay. Other fans would prefer the work of the adventurous early Springsteen. The cross-country 1978 tour to promote the album would become legendary for the intensity and length of its shows.
By the late 1970s, Springsteen had earned a reputation in the pop world as a songwriter whose material could provide hits for other bands. Manfred Manns Earth Band had achieved a U.S. number one pop hit with a heavily rearranged version of For You and Greetings Blinded by the Light in early 1977. Patti Smith reached number 13 with her take on Springsteens unreleased Because the Night (which Smith co-wrote) in 1978, while The Pointer Sisters hit number two in 1979 with Springsteens also unreleased Fire.
Springsteen in concert on The River Tour. Drammenshallen, Drammen, Norway, May 5, 1981.
In September 1979, Springsteen and the E Street Band joined the Musicians United for Safe Energy anti-nuclear power collective at Madison Square Garden for two nights, playing an abbreviated set while premiering two songs from his upcoming album. The subsequent No Nukes live album, as well as the following summers No Nukes documentary film, represented the first official recordings and footage of Springsteens fabled live act, as well as Springsteens first tentative dip into political involvement.
Springsteen continued to consolidate his thematic focus on working-class life with the 20-song double album The River in 1980, which included an intentionally paradoxical range of material from good-time party rockers to emotionally intense ballads, and finally yielded his first hit Top Ten single as a performer, Hungry Heart. This album marked a shift in Springsteens music toward a pop-rock sound that was all but missing from any of his earlier work. This is apparent in the stylistic adoption of certain eighties pop-rock hallmarks like the reverberating-tenor drums, very basic percussion/guitar and repetitive lyrics apparent in many of the tracks. The title song pointed to Springsteens intellectual direction, while a couple of the lesser-known tracks presaged his musical direction. The album sold well, becoming his first topper on the Billboard Pop Albums chart, and a long tour in 1980 and 1981 followed, featuring Springsteens first extended playing of Europe and ending with a series of multi-night arena stands in major cities in the U.S.
The River was followed in 1982 by the stark solo acoustic Nebraska. According to the Marsh biographies, Springsteen was in a depressed state when he wrote this material, and the result is a brutal depiction of American life. The title track is about the murder spree of Charles Starkweather. According to Marsh, the album started as a demo tape for new work to be played with the E Street Band, but during the recording process Springsteen and producer Landau realized the songs worked better as solo acoustic numbers. Several studio sessions with the E Street Band led them to realize that the original recording, made in Springsteens home on a simple, low-tech four-track tape deck, were the best versions they were going to get. However, those sessions were not all for naught, as the band recorded several new songs that Springsteen had written in addition to the Nebraska material, including Born in the U.S.A. and Glory Days. These new songs would not be released until two years later, when they formed the basis of Springsteens next album.
While Nebraska did not sell well, it garnered widespread critical praise (including being named Album of the Year by Rolling Stone magazines critics) and influenced later significant works by other major artists, including U2s album The Joshua Tree. It helped inspire the musical genre known as lo-fi music, becoming a cult favorite among indie-rockers. Springsteen did not tour in conjunction with Nebraskas release.
19841991: Commercial and popular phenomenon
Springsteen probably is best known for his album Born in the U.S.A. (1984), which sold 15 million copies in the U.S. and became one of the best-selling albums of all time, with seven singles hitting the Top 10, and the massively successful world tour that followed it. The title track was a bitter commentary on the treatment of Vietnam veterans, some of whom were Springsteens friends and bandmates. The lyrics in the verses were entirely unambiguous when listened to, but the anthemic music and the title of the song made it hard for many, from politicians to the common person, to get the lyricsxcept those in the chorus, which could be read many ways. The song was widely misinterpreted as jingoistic, and in connection with the 1984 presidential campaign became the subject of considerable folklore. Springsteen also turned down several million dollars offered by the Chrysler Corporation to use the song in a car commercial. (In later years, to eliminate the bombast and make the songs original meaning more explicitly clear, Springsteen performed the song accompanied only by acoustic guitar. An acoustic version also appeared on Tracks, a later album.) Dancing in the Dark was the biggest of seven hit singles from Born in the U.S.A., peaking at number 2 on the Billboard music charts. The music video for the song featured a young Courteney Cox dancing on stage with Springsteen, an appearance which helped kickstart the actresss career. The song Cover Me was written by Springsteen for Donna Summer, but his record company persuaded him to keep it for the new album. A big fan of Summers work, Springsteen wrote another song for her, Protection. Videos for the album were made by noted film directors Brian De Palma and John Sayles. Springsteen was featured on the We Are the World song and album in 1985.
During the Born in the U.S.A. Tour, Springsteen met actress Julianne Phillips. They were married in Lake Oswego, Oregon, on May 13, 1985, surrounded by intense media attention. Opposites in background, their marriage was not long-lived. Springsteens 1987 album Tunnel of Love described some of his unhappinesses in the relationship, and during the subsequent Tunnel of Love Express tour, as reported by many tabloids, Springsteen took up with backup singer Patti Scialfa. Phillips and Springsteen filed for divorce in 1988. The divorce was finalized in 1989.
Springsteen performing on the Tunnel of Love Express at the Radrennbahn Weiensee in East Berlin on July 19, 1988.
The Born in the U.S.A. period represented the height of Springsteens visibility in popular culture and the broadest audience demographic he would ever reach (aided by the release of Arthur Bakers dance mixes of three of the singles). Live/197585, a five-record box set (also on three cassettes or three CDs), was released near the end of 1986 and became the first box set to debut at number 1 on the U.S. album charts. It is one of the most commercially successful live albums of all time, ultimately selling 13 million units in the U.S. Live/197585 summed up Springsteens career to that point and displayed some of the elements that made his shows so powerful to his fans: the switching from mournful dirges to party rockers and back; the communal sense of purpose between artist and audience; the long, intense spoken passages before songs, including those describing Springsteens difficult relationship with his father; and the instrumental prowess of the E Street Band, such as in the long coda to Racing in the Street. Despite its popularity, some fans and critics felt the albums song selection could have been better. Springsteen concerts are the subjects of frequent bootleg recording and trading among fans.
By the peak of Springsteens international megastardom in the mid-80s there were no less than five Springsteen fanzines circulating at the same time in the UK, and many others elsewhere. Gary Desmonds Candys Room, produced in Liverpool, was the first in 1980, quickly followed by Dan Frenchs Point Blank, Dave Percivals The Fever, Jeff Matthews Rendezvous and Paul Limbricks Jackson Cage. In the US, Backstreets Magazine started in Seattle and continues today as a glossy publication, now in communication with Springsteens management and official website.
After this commercial peak, Springsteen released the much more sedate and contemplative Tunnel of Love (1987), a mature reflection on the many faces of love found, lost and squandered, which only selectively used the E Street Band. It presaged the breakup of his marriage to Julianne Phillips. Reflecting the challenges of love in Brilliant Disguise, Springsteen sang:
I heard somebody call your name, from underneath our willow. I saw something tucked in shame, underneath your pillow. Well Ive tried so hard baby, but I just cant see. What a woman like you is doing with me.
The subsequent Tunnel of Love Express tour shook up fans with changes to the stage layout, favorites dropped from the set list, and horn-based arrangements. During the European leg in 1988, Springsteens relationship with Scialfa became public. Later in 1988, Springsteen headlined the worldwide Human Rights Now! tour for Amnesty International. In the fall of 1989 he dissolved the E Street Band, and he and Scialfa relocated to California. Springsteen married Scialfa in 1991. They have three children: Evan James (b. 1990), Jessica Rae (b. 1991) and Sam Ryan (b. 1994).
19922001: Artistic and commercial ups and downs
In 1992, after risking charges of going Hollywood by moving to Los Angeles (a radical move for someone so linked to the blue-collar life of the Jersey Shore) and working with session musicians, Springsteen released two albums at once. Human Touch and Lucky Town were even more introspective than any of his previous work and displayed a newly revealed confidence. As opposed to his first two albums, which dreamed of happiness, and his next four, which showed him growing to fear it, at points during the Lucky Town album, Springsteen actually claims happiness for himself.
Some E Street Band fans voiced (and continue to voice) a low opinion of these albums, especially Human Touch, and did not follow the subsequent Other Band Tour. Other fans, however, who had only come to know Springsteen after the 1975 consolidation of the E Street Band, found this tour an exciting opportunity to see Springsteen develop a working onstage relationship with a different group of musicians, and to see him explore the Asbury Park soul-and-gospel base in some of his classic material.
An electric band appearance on the acoustic MTV Unplugged television program (later released as In Concert/MTV Plugged) was poorly received and further cemented fan dissatisfaction. Springsteen seemed to realize this a few years hence when he spoke humorously of his late father during his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame acceptance speech:
Ive gotta thank him because what would I conceivably have written about without him? I mean, you can imagine that if everything had gone great between us, we would have had disaster. I would have written just happy songs and I tried it in the early 90s and it didnt work; the public didnt like it.
A multiple Grammy Award winner, Springsteen also won an Academy Award in 1994 for his song Streets of Philadelphia, which appeared on the soundtrack to the film Philadelphia. The song, along with the film, was applauded by many for its sympathetic portrayal of a gay man dying of AIDS.[citation needed] The music video for the song shows Springsteens actual vocal performance, recorded using a hidden microphone, to a prerecorded instrumental track.[citation needed] This technique was developed on the Brilliant Disguise video.
In 1995, after temporarily re-organizing the E Street Band for a few new songs recorded for his first Greatest Hits album (a recording session that was chronicled in the documentary Blood Brothers), he released his second (mostly) solo guitar album, The Ghost of Tom Joad, inspired by Journey to Nowhere: The Saga of the New Underclass, a book by Pulitzer Prize-winners author Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael Williamson. This was generally less well-received than the similar Nebraska, due to the minimal melody, twangy vocals, and political nature of most of the songs, although some praised it for giving voice to immigrants and others who rarely have one in American culture. The lengthy, worldwide, small-venue solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad Tour that followed successfully featured many of his older songs in drastically reshaped acoustic form, although Springsteen had to explicitly remind his audiences to be quiet and not to clap during the performances.
Following the tour, Springsteen moved back to New Jersey with his family. In 1998, Springsteen released the sprawling, four-disc box set of out-takes, Tracks. Subsequently, Springsteen would acknowledge that the 1990s were a lost period for him: I didnt do a lot of work. Some people would say I didnt do my best work.
Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 by U2, a favor he returned in 2005.
In 1999, Springsteen and the E Street Band officially came together again and went on the extensive Reunion Tour, lasting over a year. Highlights included a record sold-out, 15-show run at Continental Airlines Arena in East Rutherford, New Jersey to kick off the American leg of the tour.
Springsteens Reunion Tour with the E Street Band ended with a triumphant ten-night, sold-out engagement at New York Citys Madison Square Garden in mid-2000 and controversy over a new song, American Skin (41 Shots), about the police shooting of Amadou Diallo. The final shows at Madison Square Garden were recorded and resulted in an HBO Concert, with corresponding DVD and album releases as Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live in New York City.
2002resent: Return to mainstream success
The scene outside the Giants Stadium parking lot for banner-marked, record-setting, 10-night stand of The Rising Tour during July 2003.
In 2002, Springsteen released his first studio effort with the full band in 18 years, The Rising, produced by Brendan OBrien. The album, mostly a reflection on the September 11 attacks, was a critical and popular success. (Many of the songs were influenced by phone conversations Springsteen had with family members of victims of the attacks who in their obituaries had mentioned how his music touched their lives.) The title track gained airplay in several radio formats, and the record became Springsteens best-selling album of new material in 15 years. Kicked off by an early-morning Asbury Park appearance on The Today Show, The Rising Tour commenced, barnstorming through a series of single-night arena stands in the U.S. and Europe to promote the album in 2002, then returning for large-scale, multiple-night stadium shows in 2003. While Springsteen had maintained a loyal hardcore fan base everywhere (and particularly in Europe), his general popularity had dipped over the years in some southern and midwestern regions of the U.S. But it was still strong in Europe and along the U.S. coasts, and he played an unprecedented 10 nights in Giants Stadium in New Jersey, a ticket-selling feat to which no other musical act has come close. During these shows Springsteen thanked those fans who were attending multiple shows and those who were coming from long distances or another country; the advent of robust Bruce-oriented online communities had made such practices more common. The Rising Tour came to a final conclusion with three nights in Shea Stadium, highlighted by renewed controversy over American Skin and a guest appearance by Bob Dylan.
During the early 2000s, Springsteen became a visible advocate for the revitalization of Asbury Park, and played an annual series of winter holiday concerts there to benefit various local businesses, organizations, and causes. These shows were explicitly intended for the devoted fans, featuring numbers such as the unreleased (until Tracks) E Street Shuffle outtake Thundercrack, a rollicking group-participation song that would mystify casual Springsteen fans. He also frequently rehearses for tours in Asbury Park; some of his most devoted followers even go so far as to stand outside the building to hear what fragments they can of the upcoming shows. The song My City of Ruins was originally written about Asbury Park, in honor of the attempts to revitalize the city. Looking for an appropriate song for a post-Sept. 11 benefit concert honoring New York City, he selected My City of Ruins, which was immediately recognized as an emotional highlight of the concert, with its gospel themes and its heartfelt exhortations to Rise up! The song became associated with post-9/11 New York, and he chose it to close The Rising album and as an encore on the subsequent tour.
At the Grammy Awards of 2003, Springsteen performed The Clashs London Calling along with Elvis Costello, Dave Grohl, and E Street Band member Steven Van Zandt and No Doubts bassist, Tony Kanal, in tribute to Joe Strummer; Springsteen and the Clash had once been considered multiple-album-dueling rivals at the time of the double The River and the triple Sandinista!. In 2004, Springsteen and the E Street Band participated in the Vote for Change tour, along with John Mellencamp, John Fogerty, the Dixie Chicks, Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Bright Eyes, the Dave Matthews Band, Jackson Browne, and other musicians. All concerts were to be held in swing states, to benefit the liberalism political organization group America Coming Together and to encourage people to register and vote. A finale was held in Washington, D.C., bringing many of the artists together. Several days later, Springsteen held one more such concert in New Jersey, when polls showed that state surprisingly close. While in past years Springsteen had played benefits for causes in which he believed against nuclear energy, for Vietnam veterans, Amnesty International, and the Christic Institute he had always refrained from explicitly endorsing candidates for political office (indeed he had rejected the efforts of Walter Mondale to attract an endorsement during the 1984 Reagan Born in the U.S.A. flap). This new stance led to criticism and praise from the expected partisan sources. Springsteens No Surrender became the main campaign theme song for John Kerrys unsuccessful presidential campaign; in the last days of the campaign, he performed acoustic versions of the song and some of his other old songs at Kerry rallies.
An acoustic guitar number during the solo Devils & Dust Tour performance at the Festhalle Frankfurt, June 15, 2005.
Devils & Dust was released on April 26, 2005, and was recorded without the E Street Band. It is a low-key, mostly acoustic album, in the same vein as Nebraska and The Ghost of Tom Joad although with a little more instrumentation. Some of the material was written almost 10 years earlier during, or shortly after, the Ghost of Tom Joad Tour, a couple of them being performed then but never released. The title track concerns an ordinary soldiers feelings and fears during the Iraq War. Starbucks rejected a co-branding deal for the album, due in part to some sexually explicit content but also because of Springsteens anti-corporate politics. The album entered the album charts at No. 1 in 10 countries (United States, Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Ireland). Springsteen began the solo Devils & Dust Tour at the same time as the albums release, playing both small and large venues. Attendance was disappointing in a few regions, and everywhere (other than in Europe) tickets were easier to get than in the past. Unlike his mid-1990s solo tour, he performed on piano, electric piano, pump organ, autoharp, ukulele, banjo, electric guitar, and stomping board, as well as acoustic guitar and harmonica, adding variety to the solo sound. (Offstage synthesizer, guitar, and percussion were also used for some songs.) Unearthly renditions of Reason to Believe, The Promised Land, and Suicides Dream Baby Dream jolted audiences to attention, while rarities, frequent set list changes, and a willingness to keep trying even through audible piano mistakes kept most of his loyal audiences happy.
In November 2005, Sirius Satellite Radio started a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week radio station on Channel 10 called E Street Radio. This channel featured commercial-free Bruce Springsteen music, including rare tracks, interviews, and daily concerts of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band recorded throughout their career.
Springsteen and The Sessions Band performing on their tour at the Fila Forum, Milan, Italy on May 12, 2006.
In April 2006, Springsteen released We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions, an American roots music project focused around a big folk sound treatment of 15 songs popularized by the radical musical activism of Pete Seeger. It was recorded with a large ensemble of musicians including only Patti Scialfa, Soozie Tyrell, and The Miami Horns from past efforts. In contrast to previous albums, this was recorded in only three one-day sessions, and frequently one can hear Springsteen calling out key changes live as the band explores its way through the tracks. The Bruce Springsteen with The Seeger Sessions Band Tour began the same month, featuring the 18-strong ensemble of musicians dubbed The Seeger Sessions Band (and later shortened to the The Sessions Band). Seeger Sessions material was heavily featured, as well as a handful of (usually drastically rearranged) Springsteen numbers. The tour proved very popular in Europe, selling out everywhere and receiving some excellent reviews, but newspapers reported that a number of U.S. shows suffered from sparse attendance. By the end of 2006, the Seeger Sessions tour toured Europe twice and toured America for only a short span. Bruce Springsteen with The Sessions Band: Live in Dublin, containing selections from three nights of November 2006 shows at the The Point Theatre in Dublin, Ireland, was released the following June.
Springsteen performing with drummer Max Weinberg behind him, on the Magic Tour stop at Veterans Memorial Arena, Jacksonville, Florida, August 15, 2008.
Springsteens next album, titled Magic, was released on October 2, 2007. Recorded with the E Street Band, it featured 10 new Springsteen songs plus Long Walk Home, performed once with the Sessions band, and a hidden track (the first included on a Springsteen studio release), Terrys Song, a tribute to Springsteens long-time assistant Terry Magovern who died on July 30, 2007. The first single, Radio Nowhere, was made available for a free download on August 28. On October 7, Magic debuted at number 1 in Ireland and the UK. Greatest Hits reentered the Irish charts at number 57, and Live in Dublin almost cracked the top 20 in Norway again. Sirius Satellite Radio also restarted E Street Radio on Channel 10 on September 27, 2007, in anticipation of Magic. Radio conglomerate Clear Channel Communications was alleged to have sent an edict to its classic rock stations to not play any songs from the new album, while continuing to play older Springsteen material. However, Clear Channel Adult Alternative (or AAA) station KBCO did play tracks from the album, undermining the allegations of a corporate blackout. The Springsteen and E Street Band Magic Tour began at the Hartford Civic Center with the albums release and was routed through North America and Europe. Springsteen and the band performed live on NBCs Today Show in advance of the opener. Longtime E Street Band organist Danny Federici went off the tour in November 2007 due to melanoma; he died on April 17, 2008, after a three-year battle with the disease.
Recent events
In April 2008, Springsteen announced his endorsement of U.S. Senator Barack Obama in his 2008 presidential campaign. In a video shot at an Ohio rally for Obama, Springsteen discussed the importance of truth, transparency and integrity in government, the right of every American to have a job, a living wage, to be educated in a decent school, and a life filled with the dignity of work, the promise and the sanctity of homeBut today those freedoms have been damaged and curtailed by eight years of a thoughtless, reckless and morally-adrift administration.
On June 18, 2008, Springsteen appeared live from Europe at the Tim Russert tribute at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., to play one of Russerts favorite songs, Thunder Road. Springsteen dedicated the song to Russert, who was one of Springsteens biggest fans.[citation needed]
Springsteen made a few solo acoustic performances in support of Obamas campaign in October 2008, culminating with a November 2 rally where he debuted Working On A Dream in a duet with Scialfa.
Springsteen at a rally for then-presidential candidate Barack Obama
Cleveland, Ohio on November 2, 2008
On November 4, the first song played over the loudspeakers after Obamas victory speech as president-elect in Chicagos Grant Park was The Rising.
Springsteens Working on a Dream album was released in late January 2009.
Springsteen was the musical opener for the We Are One: The Obama Inaugural Celebration at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18, 2009 which was attended by over 400,000. He performed The Rising with an all-female choir. Later he performed Woody Guthries This Land Is Your Land with Pete Seeger.
On January 11, 2009, Springsteen won the Golden Globe Award for Best Song for The Wrestler, from the Mickey Rourke film by the same name.
Springsteen performed at the halftime show at Super Bowl XLIII on February 1, 2009, agreeing to do it after many previous offers: t was sort of, well, if we don do it now, what are we waiting for? I want to do it while I alive.50] A few days before the game, Springsteen gave a rare press conference, where he promised a twelve-minute party. When asked if he would be nervous performing before such a large audience, Springsteen alluded to the We Are One concert, which took place at the Lincoln Memorial: Youl have a lot of crazy football fans, but you won have Lincoln staring over your shoulder. That takes some of the pressure off. His 12:45 set, with the E Street Band and the Miami Horns, included abbreviated renditions of Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out, Born to Run, Working on a Dream, and Glory Days, the latter complete with football references. The set of appearances and promotional activities led Springsteen to say, This has probably been the busiest month of my life.
On April 1, 2009, Springsteen kicked off the Working on a Dream Tour in San Jose, California. The tour was hit by controversy in February 2009 when ticket site and tour partner Ticketmaster was found to be redirecting customers to their subsidiary TicketsNow, where tickets were being sold at inflated prices, despite the availability of face-value tickets elsewhere. Ticketmaster CEO Irving Azoff issued a swift apology, following a furious statement from Springsteen, who accused the site of the abuse of our fans and our trust. The tours shows featured few songs from the new album, with instead set lists dominated by Springsteen classics and selections reflecting the ongoing late-2000s recession. The tour also featured Springsteen playing songs requested by audience members holding up signs usually garage rock or punk rock classics or older, more obscure entries in Springsteens back catalog in a practice dating back to the final stages of the Magic Tour. Drummer Max Weinberg was replaced for some shows by his 18-year-old son Jay Weinberg, so that the former could serve his role as bandleader on the debuting The Tonight Show with Conan OBrien.
Springsteen was part of the lineup of The Clearwater Concert, a celebration of Pete Seegers 90th birthday which took place on May 3, 2009 at Madison Square Garden.
Fireworks go off at the conclusion of the E! Street! Band! exhortation during the final shows at Giants Stadium.
During the Working on a Dream Tour, Springsteen and the band made their first real foray in the world of music festivals, headlining nights at the Pinkpop Festival in the Netherlands, the Bonnaroo Music Festival in the United States where Springsteen also sat in with Phish for three songs and the Glastonbury Festival and Hard Rock Calling in the UK. He also was the headliner of the Festival des Vieilles Charrues in Brittany, France in July, his only tour stop in France. His son Evan participated in the concert, playing guitar.
During a stretch of five final shows at his homestate Giants Stadium, Bruce Springsteen opened the shows with a brand new song dedicated to the old lady (and told from its perspective), named Wrecking Ball. The song highlights the historic stadium, and his Jersey roots. The stand, as well as some other shows on the U.S. third leg of the tour, featured full album presentations of Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, or Born in the U.S.A.
The tour ended as scheduled in Buffalo, NY in November 2009 amid speculation that it was the last performance ever by the E Street Band, but during the show Springsteen said it was goodbye or a little while.
In October, 2009, Bruce Springsteen was among the headline acts of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fames 25th anniversary benefit concert along with artists like U2, Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin.
On December 6, 2009, Springsteen was among the recipients of the Kennedy Center Honors, an annual award to figures from the world of arts for their contribution to American culture.. This is probably the highest honor Mr. Springsteen has received yet. Prior to the official ceremony at the Kennedy Center, the six cultural icons were hosted by President Obama and Ms. Michelle Obama. During the speech by the President, he talked about how Springsteen has incorporated the life of regular Americans in his expansive pallette of songs and how his concerts are beyond the typical rock-and-roll concerts, how apart from being high-energy concerts they are communions. President Obama ended with the remark: On days like the We Are One concert and today we are reminded that while I am the president, He is The Boss. During the official awards show on December 6, 2009, tributes were paid by several well-known celebrities like Jon Stewart, Ben Stiller, Eddie Vedder, Sting and Melissa Etheridge.
Jon Stewart opened with a funny albeit touching tribute to Mr. Springsteen: I am not a music critic. Nor historian, nor archivist. I cannot tell you where Bruce Springsteen falls in the pantheon of the American songbook. I cannot illuminate the context of his work, or its roots in the folk and oral history traditions of our great nations. But I am from New Jersey. So, I can tell you what I believe. And what I believe is that Bob Dylan and James Brown had a baby. Yes! And they abandoned this child, as you can imagine at the timeinterracial, same sex relationships being what they werethey abandoned this baby by the side of the road between the exit interchanges 8A and 9 on the Jersey Turnpikethat child was Bruce Springsteen. He continued, I believe that Bruce Springsteen is an unprecedented combination of lyrical eloquence, musical mastery and sheer unbridled, unadulterated joy. Exuberance in the act of telling stories so familiar, stories that have never been told so well or so uniquely. And I know he hating this right now. He a modest man, and he doesn like sitting there in that little box, with his little suit, wearing a little rainbow dreamcatcher or whatever they have on therehe doesn like it. He wishes he had his guitar and that I would shut up, but I will not. He is the BossBut I didn understand his music for a long time, until I began to yearn. Until I began to question the things that I was making and doing in my own life. Until I realized that it wasn just about the joyful parade on stage and the theatrics. It was about stories of lives that could be changed. And that the only status that you could fail to achieve is the status quo. The only thing, the only failure in life was not to make the effort to change our station. And it resonated with me because, and I say this truly to him I would not be here, God knows, not even in this business if it were not for the inspirational words and music of Bruce Springsteen.
Golden Globe Award-winning writer Ron Kovic then took the stage, explaining how he first met Bruce Springsteen at the Sunset Marquis Hotel in Hollywood in 1978. A chance encounter led to an exchange of the artists work, and a friendship was born between the Born on the Fourth of July author and Vietnam Veteran and the Born in the U.S.A. musician. Kovic introduced Springsteen musical tribute, which began with the Rob Mathes All-Star band performing 10th Avenue Freeze Out, followed by Grammy Award-winning musician John Mellencamp crooning Born in the U.S.A.. It was then followed by a medley of My Father House, Glory Days and I on Fire by multi-Grammy winners Ben Harper and Jennifer Nettles, accompanied by the Rob Mathes band. Grammy Award and Academy Award-winning musician Melissa Etheridge rocked out a concert-version of Born to Run, followed by Grammy Award and Golden Globe Award-winning singer Eddie Vedder explosive rendition of My City of Ruins. Finally, musical powerhouse Sting, himself a multiple Grammy, Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner, ended the night with a memorable performance of The Rising, joined by The Joyce Garrett Choir and the rest of the performers for the evening rousing conclusion. Throughout the tribute show, President Obama, Ms. Obama and the other recipients looked on admiringly at the towering personality of Mr. Springsteen.
On January 22, 2010, Bruce joined many well-known artists to perform on Hope for Haiti Now: A Global Benefit for Earthquake Relief, organized by George Clooney to raise money to help the victims of the 2010 Haiti earthquake.
The 2000s ended with Springsteen being named one of eight Artists of the Decade by Rolling Stone magazine and with Springsteens tours ranking him fourth among artists in total concert grosses for the decade.
Personal life
Springsteen family greets Obama family on stage at rally in Cleveland, Ohio on November 2, 2008.
Springsteen was a bachelor until the age of 35, when he married 25 year old Julianne Phillips (born May 6, 1960) in Lake Oswego, Oregon on May 13, 1985. The marriage helped her acting career flourish, although the two were opposites in background, and his traveling took its toll on their relationship. The final blow came when Bruce began an affair with Patti Scialfa (born July 29, 1953), whom he had dated briefly in 1984 shortly after she joined the band. Phillips and Springsteen separated in the spring of 1988, and on August 30, 1988, Julianne filed for divorce. The Springsteen/Phillips divorce was finalized on March 1, 1989.
After his wife filed for divorce in 1988, Bruce began living with Scialfa. Springsteen received much criticism for the hastiness in which he and Scialfa took their relationship. In a 1995 interview with The Advocate, Springsteen spoke about the negative publicity the couple subsequently received. Its a strange society that assumes it has the right to tell people whom they should love and whom they shouldnt. But the truth is, I basically ignored the entire thing as much as I could. I said, Well, all I know is, this feels real, and maybe I have got a mess going here in some fashion, but thats life. In 1990, Springsteen and Scialfa welcomed their first child, son Evan James. They were expecting their second child, daughter Jessica Rae (born December 30, 1991), when Bruce and Patti married on June 8, 1991. I went through a divorce, and it was really difficult and painful and I was very frightened about getting married again. So part of me said, Hey, what does it matter? But it does matter. Its very different than just living together. First of all, stepping up publicly- which is what you do: You get your license, you do all the social rituals- is a part of your place in society and in some way part of societys acceptance of youPatti and I both found that it did mean something. The couples youngest child, Sam Ryan, was born on January 5, 1994. The family lives in Rumson, New Jersey, and owns a horse farm in nearby Colts Neck. Springsteen also owns two adjacent homes in Wellington, Florida, a wealthy horse community near West Palm Beach. His eldest son, Evan, is currently a sophomore at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, a village in Newton, Massachusetts. His daughter Jessica Springsteen is a nationally-ranked champion equestrian.
In November 2000, Springsteen filed legal action against Jeff Burgar which accused him of registering the domain brucespringsteen.com (along with several other celebrity domains) in bad faith to funnel web users to his Celebrity 1000 portal site. Once the legal complaint was filed, Burgar pointed the domain to a Springsteen biography and message board. In February 2001, Springsteen lost his dispute with Burgar. A WIPO panel ruled 2 to 1 in favor of Burgar.
The October 26, 2009 show for the Working on a Dream Tour in Kansas City, Missouri was canceled an hour before its scheduled start time due to the death of Lenny Sullivan, Springsteens cousin and assistant road manager.
Springsteen has led a relatively quiet and private life for a well-known popular performer and artist. He moved from Los Angeles to New Jersey in the early 1990s specifically to raise a family in a non-paparazzi environment. The Super Bowl XLIII press conference regarding the halftime show took place more than 25 years since his last press conference. However, he has appeared in few radio interviews, most notably on NPR and BBC. 60 minutes aired his last extensive interview on TV before his tour to support his album, Magic.
E Street Band
Main article: E Street Band
The E Street Band is considered to have started in October 1972, even though it was not officially known as such until September 1974. The E Street Band was inactive from the end of 1988 through early 1999, except for a brief reunion in 1995.
Current members
Bruce Springsteen lead vocals, guitar, harmonica, piano
Garry Tallent bass guitar, tuba
Clarence Big Man Clemons saxophone, percussion, backing vocals
Max Weinberg drums, percussion (joined September 1974)
Roy Bittan piano, synthesizer (joined September 1974)
Steven Van Zandt lead guitar, backing vocals, mandolin (officially joined July 1975 after playing in previous bands; left in 1984 to go solo; rejoined in early 1995, however made appearances during the Other Band Tour).
Nils Lofgren guitar, pedal steel guitar, backing vocals (replaced Steve Van Zandt in June 1984; remained in group after Van Zandt returned)
Patti Scialfa backing and duet vocals, acoustic guitar, percussion (joined June 1984; became Springsteens wife in 1991)
Soozie Tyrell violin, acoustic guitar, percussion, backing vocals (joined 2002, occasional appearances before that)
Charles Giordano organ, accordion, glockenspiel (originally a Sessions Band member, joined the E Street Band on a temporary basis in late 2007, during the illness of Danny Federici. Continued playing with the E Street Band after Federici died in April 2008.)
Former members
Vini Mad Dog Lopez drums (inception through February 1974, when asked to resign)
David Sancious keyboards (June 1973 to August 1974)
Ernest Boom Carter drums (February to August 1974)
Suki Lahav violin, backing vocals (September 1974 to March 1975)
Danny Federici organ, accordion, glockenspiel (died on April 17, 2008, melanoma)
Jay Weinberg drums, percussion (substituting for his father during parts of the 2009 tour)
Film
Music used in films
Springsteens music has long been intertwined with film. His music was first linked with the silver screen in the 1983 John Sayles film Baby, Its You, which featured several songs from Born to Run. The relationship Springsteen established with Sayles would re-surface in later years, with Sayles directing videos for songs from Born in the U.S.A. and Tunnel of Love. The song (Just Around the Corner to the) Light of Day was written for the early Michael J. Fox/Joan Jett vehicle Light of Day.
His original work has frequently been used in films and he won an Oscar for his song Streets of Philadelphia from the Jonathan Demme film Philadelphia (1993). He was nominated for a second Oscar for Dead Man Walkin, from the movie Dead Man Walking (1995).
His song Missing plays during the opening credits of Sean Penns 1995 movie, The Crossing Guard. It was released in 2003 on The Essential Bruce Springsteen.
His song Secret Garden, which first appeared on 1995s Greatest Hits, was used in Cameron Crowes 1996 film Jerry Maguire.
Although it doesnt appear on the soundtrack album, his song Iceman was used in the 2007 movie In the Land of Women.
Springsteen also wrote an eponymous song for Darren Aronofskys 2008 film The Wrestler. The song was awarded a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song and nominated for the MTV Movie Award as Best Song From a Movie.
The album The River was also well mentioned in the movie Reign Over Me with Adam Sandler. Two songs from that very album, Drive All Night and Out In The Streets, were played as background music.
In the 1997 film Cop Land, Sylvester Stallones character plays the songs Drive All Night and Stolen Car from The River on his turntable.
His track, Hungry Heart was used as a background song in the movies A Perfect Storm, The Wedding Singer and Risky Business. The track, The Fuse from his album, The Rising, was used during the end credits of the Spike Lee film, 25th Hour.
More recently, his song, Lucky Town from his album of the same name was used in the Eric Bana and Drew Barrymore starring movie, Lucky You in the starting title track. The 2007 movie, In the land of women used the song, Iceman from the album Tracks as part of its OST.
Films inspired by music
In turn, films have been inspired by his music, including The Indian Runner, written and directed by Sean Penn, which Penn has specifically noted as being inspired by Springsteens song Highway Patrolman.
Kevin Smith is an admitted fan of fellow New Jersey native Springsteen and named his film Jersey Girl after the Tom Waits song which Springsteen made famous. The song was also used on the soundtrack.
Acting
Springsteen made his first on-screen appearance as a cameo in High Fidelity and it was voted Best Cameo in a Movie at the MTV Movie Awards.
Discography
Main article: Bruce Springsteen discography
Major studio albums (along with their chart positions in the U.S. Billboard 200 at the time of release):
1973: Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. ()
1973: The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle ()
1975: Born to Run (#3)
1978: Darkness on the Edge of Town (#5)
1980: The River (#1)
1982: Nebraska (#3)
1984: Born in the U.S.A. (#1)
1987: Tunnel of Love (#1)
1992: Human Touch (#2)
1992: Lucky Town (#3)
1995: The Ghost of Tom Joad (#11)
2002: The Rising (#1)
2005: Devils & Dust (#1)
2006: We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (#3)
2007: Magic (#1)
2009: Working on a Dream (#1)
Awards and recognition
Bruce Springsteen (second from right) was among the five recipients of the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors
Grammy Awards
Springsteen has won 20 Grammy Awards, as follows (years shown are the year the award was given for, not the year in which the ceremony was held):
Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male, 1984, Dancing in the Dark
Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male, 1987, Tunnel of Love
Song of the Year, 1994, Streets of Philadelphia
Best Rock Song, 1994, Streets of Philadelphia
Best Rock Vocal Performance, Solo, 1994, Streets of Philadelphia
Best Song Written Specifically for a Motion Picture or Television, 1994, Streets of Philadelphia
Best Contemporary Folk Album, 1996, The Ghost of Tom Joad
Best Rock Album, 2002, The Rising
Best Rock Song, 2002, The Rising
Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, 2002, The Rising
Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, 2003, Disorder in the House (with Warren Zevon)
Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2004, Code of Silence
Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2005, Devils & Dust
Best Traditional Folk Album, 2006, The Seeger Sessions: We Shall Overcome
Best Long Form Music Video, 2006, Wings For Wheels: The Making Of Born to Run
Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2007, Radio Nowhere
Best Rock Song, 2007, Radio Nowhere
Best Rock Instrumental Performance, 2007, Once Upon a Time in the West
Best Rock Song, 2008, Girls in Their Summer Clothes
Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance, 2009, Working on a Dream
Only one of these awards has been one of the cross-genre major ones (Song, Record, or Album of the Year); he has been nominated a number of other times for the majors, but failed to win.
Golden Globe Awards
Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for Streets of Philadelphia in 1994.
Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for The Wrestler in 2009.
Academy Awards
Academy Award for Best Original Song, 1993, Streets of Philadelphia from Philadelphia.
Emmy Awards
The Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live In New York City HBO special won two technical Emmy Awards in 2001.
Other recognition
Polar Music Prize in 1997.
Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 1999.
Inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame, 1999.
Inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame, 2007.
Born to Run named The unofficial youth anthem of New Jersey by the New Jersey state legislature; something Springsteen always found to be ironic, considering that the song is about leaving New Jersey.
The minor planet 23990, discovered Sept. 4, 1999, by I. P. Griffin at Auckland, New Zealand, was officially named in his honor.
Ranked #23 on Rolling Stone magazines 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.
Made Time magazines 100 Most Influential People Of The Year 2008 list.
Won Critics Choice Award for Best Song with The Wrestler in 2009.
Performed at the Super Bowl XLIII half time show.
Kennedy Center Honors, 2009.
Influence
In addition to his noted influence on music in his native New Jersey, Springsteen is also cited as an influence by Bon Jovi, Arcade Fire, Gaslight Anthem, The Constantines, The Hold Steady, The National, Kings of Leon, The Killers, U2, Johnny Cash in his later recordings, and countless others. His songs have been covered by diverse artists such as Melissa Etheridge, Johnny Cash, McFLY, Tegan and Sara, Damien Jurado, Aimee Mann, Social Distortion, Rage Against The Machine, Ben Harper, Eric Bachmann, Josh Ritter, Frank Turner, and Hank Williams III, in addition to above-noted bands like Arcade Fire and The National.
See also
List of best selling music artists
List of artists who reached number one on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart
References
Alterman, Eric. It Aint No Sin To Be Glad Youre Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen. Little Brown, 1999. ISBN 0-316-03885-7.
Coles, Robert. Bruce Springsteens America: The People Listening, a Poet Singing. Random House, 2005. ISBN 0-375-50559-8.
Cross, Charles R. Backstreets: Springsteen the man and his music Harmony Books, New York 1989/1992. ISBN 0-517-58929-X. Contains 15+ interviews and a complete list of all Springsteen songs including unreleased compositions. Complete lising of all concerts 19651990 most of them with tracklists. Hundreds of previously unreleased high quality color pictures.
Cullen, Jim. Born in the U.S.A.: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition. 1997; Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2005. New edition of 1997 study book places Springsteens work in the broader context of American history and culture. ISBN 0-8195-6761-2
Eliot, Marc with Appel, Mike. Down Thunder Road. Simon & Schuster, 1992. ISBN 0-671-86898-5.
Graff, Gary. The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen A to E to Z. Visible Ink, 2005. ISBN 1-57859-151-1.
Guterman, Jimmy. Runaway American Dream: Listening to Bruce Springsteen. Da Capo, 2005. ISBN 0-306-81397-1.
Hilburn, Robert. Springsteen. Rolling Stone Press, 1985. ISBN 0-684-18456-7.
Knobler, Peter with special assistance from Greg Mitchell. Who Is Bruce Springsteen and Why Are We Saying All These Wonderful Things About Him?, Crawdaddy, March 1973.
Marsh, Dave. Bruce Springsteen: Two Hearts: The Definitive Biography, 19722003. Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-96928-X. (Consolidation of two previous Marsh biographies, Born to Run (1981) and Glory Days (1987).)
Wolff, Daniel. 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land. Bloomsbury, 2005. ISBN 1-58234-509-0.
Further reading
Greetings from E Street: The Story of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Chronicle Books, 2006. ISBN 0-8118-5348-9.
Days of Hope and Dreams: An Intimate Portrait of Bruce Springsteen. Billboard Books, 2003. ISBN 0-8230-8387-X.
Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader. Penguin, 2004. ISBN 0-14-200354-9.
Runaway American Dream: Listening to Bruce
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